Oblivion
by southspinner
Summary: In which Jean Kirschtein is a self-proclaimed pretentious douchebag with an abiding love for metaphors and unlit cigarettes, Marco Bodt is an obscure novel addict who realizes that everything is a side effect of dying, and the two of them fall into what is not so much a story about cancer as a story about love, because everyone knows that cancer books suck. [TFiOS AU]
1. Chapter 1

"_We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will." _

__Chuck Palahniuk_

Perfect friendships are overrated. I always found that I couldn't trust the idea of friends that didn't hate each other at least a little bit of the time, found the idea of it to be empty and vapid and a little bit contrived. Friendship should be like life, I reasoned - ugly, gritty, none of the storybook bullshit with walking off into the sunset holding hands and basking in the unique glow of your platonic soulmate.

When I first met Eren Jaeger, we were both thirteen years old, sitting in chairs next to each other in a white, sterile room at Trost Memorial as a cocktail of chemicals with seven-syllable-long names dripped into our arms. Names and diagnoses on our wristbands like prison tattoos, but he didn't even bother to spare a glance at _Jean Kirschtein, Osteosarcoma_ before glaring over at me, one blue eye, one brown, glassy, unnatural one. "What are you looking at?"

I took a quick look down at _Eren Jaeger, Some Complicated Eye Cancer I Can't Remember The Name Of_ and replied with a saccharine smile, "More than you are, I'd bet." And that's how we became the very first fistfight in Memorial's pediatric oncology ward.

Fast forward four years to age seventeen, and somewhere along the way, I'd lost a leg, Eren was a week from losing his other eye, and we'd gained some warped sort of dynamic that couldn't really be called _friendship_ in most circles but which worked for us just as well as everyone else's tired relationship tropes.

My phone went off at nine in the morning on a Saturday (a goddamn _Saturday_) with an unholy shriek, and I pawed at my bedside table, half-conscious until I brought the hunk of sleep-defiling plastic up to my ear. "I'll fucking kill you."

"Good morning to you too, asshole," Eren sighed, a vague crackle across speakers and signals and satellites orbiting miles above the Earth. "Come to Support Group with me this afternoon."

"No."

"Jean-"

"No," I groaned, rolling away from the light blasting my face as it filtered around the curtain pulled over the sliding glass door on the other side of my room, consciousness screaming through my head like a hateful little banshee. "In case you missed the memo, I'm in remission. I've got better things to do with my day than hang out with you and the Chemo Club talking about our feelings."

A raspy laugh. "Better things to do. Like what?"

"Like sleeping, which I was doing like all other normal seventeen-year-old boys on a Saturday morning before you called asking me to tag along with you to what is possibly the most depressing thing in existence."

"My mom makes me go. The least you could do is ensure that I don't have to go alone," he whined, and I could almost see him, blue eye rolling upwards, brown glass one staying creepily in place. "Solidarity, man."

"Why would I give you anything resembling solidarity? You're a prick," I replied acidly, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from my eyes with the heel of my hand. "A prick who borrowed my new copy of Mass Effect 3 a month ago and hasn't returned it so I can actually play the game yet."

"Come to Support Group and I'll give you the game back after you leave, deal?"

"That's not a deal, you fucker, that's extortion."

"Jeaaaaaaaan."

"No."

Eight hours later, I was sitting in a cold, tiled church basement in an uncomfortable molded-plastic chair two seats down from Eren Jaeger, feeling like I'd come some sort of fucked up full-circle from the first day I ever met him. Instead of printed plastic bracelets, our name and diagnoses work-camp brands were written in our own penmanship on cheery little nametags, which somehow made the situation all the more depressing. Hi, My Name Is: Reiner, and the very lifeblood in my veins is trying to kill me. Smiley face in the lower right hand corner. Hi, My Name Is: Annie, and I've been shitting into this colostomy bag you can see outlined under my shirt for about a year now because of my traitorous colon. Cheery flowers penned in across the top. Group Leader Erwin had said something when we came in about being in the literal heart of Jesus, but all I got was the harrowing feeling that I was sitting in Death's waiting room.

A basement full of watered-down lemonade, stale cookies, and a bunch of kids with cancer. We were one punchline or headline away from being an insensitive stand-up routine or heartbreaking local cable news feature.

I sat and watched the miserable parade. A merry-go-round of emaciated bodies and sunken, tired eyes filling one seat after another until we all sat looking at each other in an uncomfortable silence.

"So," said Group Leader Erwin like this was an exciting game show instead of a roundtable for the kids you see plastered on the spare change jars next to the registers at fast food joints. "I think we should start with-"

The door opened mid-sentence, a resonant, metallic clang that drowned out the mutters and wheezes and phlegmy coughs from the diseased peanut gallery. Bang. Echo, echo. Creak, creak, creak. Symbolically enough and fitting in with my general view of the situation, I saw the oxygen tank first. Dented and worn, one wheel creaking on its axle, obviously the outlet of abuse from someone who resented toting it around. The tank led to a clear plastic hose, which led to a split section and a nosepiece, which led to a guy who looked roughly my age, if a little worse for wear. Dark hair, big doe-like eyes, lots of freckles. Cute.

He seemed to feel everyone's eyes on him, curled in on himself slightly as he snatched a cookie off the table and shuffled over to the last empty seat, three down from me. Group Leader Erwin cleared his throat and picked right back up where he left off, although my attention had faltered somewhere between his recount of cancer taking his nads but giving him a new perspective and every day being a gift or some such fuckery. Instead, I looked intently at the boy who'd come in late, fiddling with the handle of his oxygen tank cart and drumming fingertips on the knee of faded blue jeans to some inaudible beat. He was looking the other way; it took a moment to figure out exactly where his line of sight was aimed. The clock. I let out a small snort that was half amusement and half appreciation, and the sound made him turn around, holding eye contact with me for a second before looking pointedly away again.

A challenge. Also, I was bored. So I kept staring at Freckles as the clock ticked out an odd syncopation to the timed hiss of his oxygen tank dispersing its contents, the drone of some sermon about making the most out of what you have fading steadily into the background until he finally turned his head and looked back at me. A crooked almost-smile settled on my lips. He raised an eyebrow. I grinned a little wider. He rolled his brown eyes up towards the ceiling and looked away again.

And everything came back into focus starting with two familiar syllables. "Eren, why don't you start? You mentioned that you were having a bit of a tough time."

Yeah, because having one of your senses ripped away constituted a tough time. I could practically see the murder coming off Eren's skin in waves, but he'd been here long enough to know the routine, painted on a plastic smile that even almost fooled me, stood up and gave everyone a breezy wave. "Yeah, hi, I'm Eren. And, uh… I guess I'm having surgery in a week that's going to make me blind. But on the upside, I apparently won't have cancer anymore. So, yeah."

Group Leader Erwin nodded gravely like this was some sort of progress, steepling his fingers and saying, "I acknowledge your struggle, Eren. Come on, guys, let him hear it."

"We acknowledge your struggle, Eren," the group sighed collectively.

"You've got to be _shitting _me," I muttered under my breath, apparently loudly enough to carry to three seats down, because Freckles gave an undignified snort of a laugh, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards despite what seemed a valiant effort. I caught his eye again, nodding at our general surroundings as if to ask, _Is this for real?_

He snorted again, mouth settling into a grimace as if to reply, _Unfortunately, yeah._

I went ahead and decided that even if the rest of this hellish hour had no other bright spots, I'd at least met a kindred spirit who shared my low tolerance for bullshit.

"New face, okay, let's hear from you."

I put on a big, plastic smile that matched Eren's. The one you learn for your family's sake when they ask you if you're feeling okay and you lie, pretend that the chemo doesn't make your whole body ache and that you can't feel yourself dying cell by cell. I'd gotten good enough at it over the years that I didn't even have to try as I stretched my arms out and leaned my chair back on its rear legs. "Jean Kirschtein. Seventeen. Osteosarcoma. As far as you're all concerned, those are probably the only four words that matter. I've been in remission for a year, but a certain dumbass suffering from a crisis of impending blindness brought me along as his security blanket today."

Eren laughed. Everyone else looked vaguely uncomfortable. Group Leader Erwin looked like he had absolutely no fucking idea what to make of me. Good. As a formerly-diseased teenage tragedy with one leg and more disenchantment than a human body was probably designed to hold, being an enigma was about the best thing I had going for me. "And how are you feeling?"

"Oh, I'm fantastic," I drawled, raking a hand through my hair and tilting my head back to look at the dingy whorls of the ceiling paint. "Life as a cripple, debt that will drive my parents to early graves, but hey, I get to keep kicking with one foot for seventy more years, give or take. I'm downright blinded with gratitude."

"Shut up, you ass," Eren snapped.

"Oh, come on, Eren, you should have seen that one coming." By no coincidence judging by the look I got, we moved on to the next introduction rather quickly after that.

Annie was sixteen with Stage III colon cancer, and she was feeling self-conscious about her poo bag, as per usual. Thomas should have probably been in a hospital instead of at Support Group, and he was purportedly feeling fine. I knew the look after years of hospital trips. He wouldn't be attending next week's session. Or any session. Ever again.

Freckles fiddled with his tank again, eyes on the floor. "Marco." And now he had a name. "I'm seventeen. Thyroid, and metastases in the lungs. I'm okay."

And after we'd all read off our prison tattoos for everyone else, we dove right in. A whole hour of listening to sob stories I knew too well because I'd lived them, every ticking fraction of the clock making me despise Eren a little more for dragging me into this. By the time we were down to fifteen agonizing more minutes, I was almost to the conclusion that no video game was worth this. Ilse, eighteen, Stage IV liver cancer was scared of dying. We acknowledge your struggle, Ilse. All I acknowledged was that Eren owed me a paid-in-full burrito the size of my head from the Chipotle down the street as soon as we emerged from this hell.

"Jean, we haven't heard from you since we opened up." I wondered how much the Support Group benefactors paid Group Leader Erwin to make us all as uncomfortable as humanly possible. It was by sheer force of willpower alone that I didn't give any of them the satisfaction of seeing me cringe. "Let's go with Ilse's train of thought and talk about your fears. What are you afraid of?"

What was I afraid of? Namely the fact that my asshole best friend had forgotten to bring my game with him and this entire sad affair had been for nothing. But snark would earn me more scrutiny than compliance, so I tried to dig deep, I really did. What was I afraid of? Lots of little things, but mainly-

"Oblivion," I finally said decisively, looking at the chewed stubs of my fingernails and trying to get the cloyingly sweet, gritty taste of poorly mixed powdered lemonade off the backs of my teeth.

Group Leader Erwin blinked once, twice. "All right, that's a good topic to start some conversation. Oblivion?"

"Oblivion. The fact that one day we're all going to fly into the sun and evaporate, and nothing that the human race ever accomplished will matter." For all my fear of it, my voice was almost bored as I clarified the definition. "And I am absolutely petrified of-"

"That's a stupid thing to be scared of," a soft voice floated over the top of mine, and a collective head turn left the attention focused on Freckles - Marco - who immediately sprouted a pink flush across the sickly pallor of his cheekbones before continuing. "You act like Oblivion is some sort of great big unknown. And it's just… not. The reality of it has always been here. It's always been a fact that one day we're all going to fly into the sun and evaporate. It's not new information. A time comes when all of us become aware of it. Oblivion's not some monster under the bed for you to be scared of. It just… is."

The room was silent with the sound of people not getting it. A slow, wide smile stretched across my face. "Well damn, that's a good bit of philosophy. Tell me, why shouldn't I be scared of Oblivion?"

Marco tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing like he wasn't sure of whether or not I was patronizing him. Actually, I wasn't sure of whether or not I was patronizing him. "Because it's an inevitability."

"So is death. Should we not fear that, either?"

Eventually the silence gave way to other fears, other stories, other tears, but Marco kept looking at me across the circle with that uncertain expression, lean arms crossed over his chest. I held his gaze evenly, letting him take what he would from the whole exchange. What I took from it was that he had an interesting sort of symmetry to the smattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks that tended towards entropy as they moved outwards, fanning out across his forehead and chin, even a few on his lips. It seemed impossible that someone could have so many without having some sort of weird skin condition, but I didn't see any melanoma on his prison tattoo nametag. Just the thyroid and mets in the lungs. Curious.

I didn't bow my head during the closing prayer. Flaunting my atheism in the House of the Lord seemed like a good way for the ceiling to cave in on my sinful head, but the risk was a better option than pretending to be something other than what I was. Eren had always been religious against his own better judgment, mumbled along like a good little sycophant beside me. They say that if terminal illness can't bring a person to God's loving bosom, nothing can. Well, I dodged that bullet, not that I was ever under the delusion that any higher power would want something to do with me. It's a lot easier to make your way through the world as a very pretentious, very prideful, very gay individual without having to answer to some moderator in the sky. Somewhere amidst that train of thought, I looked across the circle and noticed that Marco wasn't prostrating himself before the Almighty either. I raised an eyebrow. He gave me a silent, challenging look, daring me to say something. I replied with a little half-smirk that said I wouldn't dream of it. We stayed in that little standoff until everyone was dismissed.

"So is that one here all the time?" I asked Eren after, grabbing him by the arm before he got into anyone else's range of hearing.

He frowned in confusion, following my line of sight and starting to answer before a look of horror crossed his face. "Yeah, he showed up the week after I… No. Jean, _no._"

"No, what?"

"No, I'm not going to let you try to get a date at a _cancer support group,_" he hissed, looking at me like I was some sort of barbarian for even thinking of it. "That's twisted even for you."

I laughed, genuinely amused. "I love when you glare at me. The expression only conveys through one eye and the asymmetry is hilarious."

"And you walk like a fucking Weeble, but you don't see me saying anything about it," Eren spat back, shoving past me and going to bitterly nurse a Dixie cup of lemonade. "Fine, go make a fool of yourself. Dick."

"Don't recall ever asking for your permission to do such," I replied breezily, wandering my way over to where Marco was stooped over trying to adjust something on his oxygen tank.

"You know," I started, "You're probably the first person who's ever told me that my fears were stupid."

His lips pursed into a thin line, the only indication that he even acknowledged my presence. "Sorry."

"No, don't be. I think it's something everyone needs to hear once in a while."

"It was just a weird thing to say, is all." Marco had a peculiar set to his shoulders, a different way of carrying himself that probably had something to do with compensating for the unwieldy addition of the tank he dragged along behind him as he headed for the door. "People don't typically talk about what terrifies them with a shit-eating grin on their face."

"Well. You know. 'Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head,'" I shrugged, snatching a cookie off the table as we passed.

He stopped, turned around to look at me. "What?"

My jaw dropped. "Chuck Palahniuk? _Fight Club?_ Are you not familiar with it? It's a literary masterpiece."

"Never heard of it."

"Blasphemy!"

"I read weird books, okay, I'm not exactly stocking my shelves off the New York Times Bestseller list," Marco replied a little defensively, eyes narrowing as he gave his tank a sharp tug and made for the door.

"Hey, hey, no, I wasn't implying that you're any less intellectual for your ignorance of the fact that Palahniuk's a god. I was only - oh, give me a second," I rushed out, crossing in front of him and snagging Eren by the back of the shirt before he could get out the door. "My game, Jaeger. That was our agreement. And this was far more depressing than you made it out to be. I want extra compensation."

"You get the extra compensation of me not kicking your ass," he growled, pulling a plastic case out of his backpack and shoving it into my chest before stalking up the stairs.

"We've been best friends since we were twelve." I explained. Marco nodded slowly.

"So why did you keep giving me that weird look after our Oblivion conversation?" he asked suddenly.

I gave him the aforementioned look again. "How easily offended are you, Marco?"

"Not very."

"Because you're beautiful in a very strange way, and you were far more interesting than anything else going on in that excuse for a coping mechanism." The statement was delivered with a shrug, simple and honest.

He blinked. "I'm not seeing the punchline here."

"That's because Eren's not around. When I tell a joke, he usually ends up being the punchline."

"No, really, I don't-"

"You know, they made _Fight Club_ into a movie. If nothing else, it's got a young, shirtless Brad Pitt in it."

"I'll look it up," Marco sighed, starting up the stairs seemingly without caring whether or not I followed him, although he didn't protest when I did.

"Or you could come over and watch it with me. We've got a home theater. Very nice. Surround sound." Shameless, really. I could practically hear the sound of Eren's palm colliding with his forehead inside my mind.

"I just met you," he wheezed, halfway up the stairs and sounding painfully winded. I stood in the middle of the stairwell and waited as his breath caught up with him and he fixed me with an incredulous look. "You could be some sort of weirdo."

"Oh, I assure you, I'm definitely some sort of weirdo," I grinned, climbing up the stairs and holding the exit door open for him, which earned me a glare for whatever reason.

The parking lot was mostly empty, the last few stragglers piling into their parents cars as we walked out into the beginnings of a sunset over the horizon of suburban asphalt. It was almost a serene environment, or rather it would have been if not for the hideous sucking sounds coming from Eren and a curvy, raven-haired silhouette that had him pinned against the wall of the church.

"I understand that he wants to look at Mikasa as much as he can before next week, but _really,_" I shook my head, watching the two of them fumble around for a bit before turning back to look at Marco. "Your ride not here yet?"

He shook his head, staring with a slight sort of distaste at the writhing silhouettes in the corner. "That's kind of gross."

"Young love. Beautiful, unique, and vaguely disgusting," I agreed, pulling a pack of Marlboro Reds out of the pocket of the worn leather jacket thrown over my shoulder and perching the cylinder between my lips.

The look on Marco's face went from slight distaste to revulsion. "Are you _kidding me_ right now?! What, do you think that makes you look like a badass or something?! That is utterly _repulsive!_ God, you've just completely ruined this!"

"Completely ruined it?" I asked, smirking crookedly. "Completely?"

"Yes, completely! Christ on a crutch, I meet a cute guy who likes supposedly good literature and isn't unintelligent and you have to go and ruin it. You _had cancer,_ Jean, are you really going to funnel a bunch of your own money into a Russian Roulette game to get _more cancer_ because of a stupid aesthetic that isn't nearly as attractive as people make it out to be?! News flash, pal, lung cancer _blows._" The grip around the handle of his oxygen tank was white-knuckled, and for a second, I was almost afraid that I was about to get clocked in the head by a skinny, freckled, adorable boy in a green sweater who looked just about angry enough to snap me in half.

"You think I'm cute?" I asked, which earned me a loud half-scream of frustration and Marco turning around to storm off before he could see me grinning like an absolute idiot. I wasn't exactly a ball of insecurities, but being called attractive by an attractive person was always a good ego boost. Eren always told me that I had a horse face and stupid hair that was a gross dishwater blonde and too messy for its own good, but beauty criticism from someone with a mismatched glass eye sort of demanded to be taken with a grain of salt.

"I did!" Marco fumed, stalking towards a minivan driven by a pretty, middle-aged woman with dark hair and freckles that absolutely confirmed she was his mother. Laughing, I reached down and grabbed his wrist before he could yank the door handle, watching him whirl around in a huff.

"Marco. You do realize I haven't lit it yet, right?" I asked.

"What?" he said.

"I don't ever light one. That's not what it's about," I explained, the cigarette still dangling from my lips. "They can't hurt you if you don't light them It's an exercise in power. You put something with the power to kill you right between your lips, but it can't do anything unless you let it."

Marco's jaw slackened, a look of disbelief settling hard in his eyes. "So it's…"

"A metaphor, yeah," I nodded.

"That is without a doubt the most pretentious thing I've ever heard in my life."

"I never claimed it wasn't," I shrugged, noting that he hadn't yanked his hand away yet. "You know now that I'm not a smoker. However, if me being a pretentious douchebag with an abiding love for metaphors is going to be a deal breaker, we might have a problem."

Marco rapped on his mom's passenger side window, waited for her to roll it down. "I'm going to go watch a movie with Jean Kirschtein. I'll be home by ten."

I reminded myself to tell Eren later that trolling for dates at a cancer support group, while twisted, had the potential to be very successful.


	2. Chapter 2

Marco had this look of disapproval that could drop a bull elephant at twenty paces, an intensity you wouldn't expect from a scrawny five-foot-tenish kid wheeling around an oxygen tank like a hissing, creaky ball and chain. I'd felt it sink into my forehead like a sniper's bullet for the first time when I'd put the cigarette in my mouth, felt it the second time when we piled into my black '04 Camry, a hand-me-down from my mother gone from lipstick in the cup holder to empty fast food bags in the floorboards and loud, angry punk rock blasting from the speakers.

"Not a shredding guitar solo person?" I asked, more amused than offended as I turned the volume down and waited for Marco to get his oxygen tank situated.

"My mom and dad were kind of professional hippies back before the whole Terminally Ill Kid bomb got dropped. I'm more into folk music," he replied, the last word hiccuping back in his throat as we lurched out of the parking space and made a hard right out of the church lot onto Main, a chorus of horns blaring behind us. "Christ, you're a terrible driver."

"In response to which I politely invite you to try operating a motor vehicle with a hunk of plastic and metal where your leg should be." Shrugging offhandedly, I slammed on the brake just sort of a red light, the momentum throwing both of us forward against our seat belts. "It's even worse when I try to use my left foot. I'm a very safe driver, I promise. It's just a bit of a stylistic difference from most people."

Marco went so pale that I could see every individual freckle, a hand darting up to the little plastic bow above the door that my mom affectionately called the "Jesus handle" whenever she was in the car with me, so titled because it was typically what she grabbed while screeching out a panicked "Jesus!" as we lurched through the streets.

"So, professional hippies, huh?" I said breezily, unintentionally gunning it out of the intersection and slamming both of us back into our seats. "I know nothing about you."

He flicked his eyes over in my direction briefly before looking back out the window. "I don't know anything about you, either. And yet here I am on my way to go look at shirtless Brad Pitt with you."

"Oh, I'm not anything as interesting as professional hippies for parents," I laughed, swerving around a slow old lady in a blue Cadillac and zooming up the ramp to the freeway. "I'm a stereotypical teenage boy who loves video games and sleeping, both of which I elected to forego in favor of coming to Support Group today."

"You also like Chuck Palahniuk. And metaphors."

"Just so. But I know me. I don't know you. I only know your prison tattoo."

Marco blinked. "My what?"

"Another metaphor," I explained, merging onto the freeway and pawing at my radio until the CD I had playing went to the next track. "Eren and I thought of it. When you're in treatment, you just become your name and diagnosis. It's like how they would brand people with a number at work camps. A prison tattoo. I know that you have ex-hippie parents and like folk music, and then I know that people see you as thyroid cancer with mets in your lungs, and that your name is Marco. Don't know your last name. So even your prison tattoo's a little faded."

"It's Bodt," he laughed, the confusion on his face relaxing.

"What is that, Polish?"

"Belgian."

"Ah, exotic," I smirked, and I could see him fighting back a smile. "So there we go. Prison tattoo, Belgian hippie parents, and folk music. What's your story?"

Marco rolled his shoulders and started playing with the handle of his oxygen tank. He did that when he was nervous. Good to know. "I was twelve when I was diagnosed, but-"

"No, no, I already know your prison tattoo, I want your _story,_" I cut him off at the same time I cut off a very angry college dudebro in a green Camaro, waving my hand absently. "What do you like to do, what was your imaginary friend's name when you were a kid, who's your favorite folk artist (if you say Bob Dylan you're a poser), what are those weird books you like to read?"

"You're kind of abrasive, you know that?" he said.

"A very true observation, but also a transparent attempt to change the subject," I said.

That look of disapproval sank into me again, drilling through the side of my skull, a laser beam of exasperation. Marco sighed and leaned back into his seat. "I like reading, and I play piano recreationally and not very well. I didn't have an imaginary friend. Bob Dylan is _the_ folk artist, and I'm not a poser for liking his early stuff, although I'm really more of a Simon and Garfunkel guy. And I like books you've never seen by people you've never heard of."

"And the pieces begin to fall into place," I nodded sagely, not missing the little twitch of irritation that I got in response for being so intentionally enigmatic. "And you said you got your tattoo at twelve?"

"Yeah, right after my birthday." After so long, cancer kids don't get that sad, wounded look in their eyes when they talk about the shitstorm raging within their bodies. They become as clinical and detached as the people treating them. Humans are, at their core, creatures of imitation. For all intents and purposes, Marco could be reading straight out of his medical files. "They caught it kind of late, and chemo didn't do much. By the time any treatment started sticking it was already in my lungs. I had a close scrape when I was fourteen, ended up in ICU for a while with a bunch of fluid and stuff, but right after that I got enrolled in this trial for a new drug, and it actually stopped the growth. So here I am. Indefinitely terminal."

The exit ramp for the road leading into my neighborhood was just ahead, but an unbearably slow tractor trailer was in the way. I pursed my lips and fiddled with the radio again. "That's a very elaborate tattoo. You've got a lot of hospital time under your belt. Why haven't I seen you at Memorial before?"

"I go to St. Rose," he shrugged.

"Oh, private hospital. Fancy."

"We've got good insurance," Marco shot back, sounding almost defensive.

Steering with my knee, I pulled the pack of cigarettes out of my pocket again, popped one between my lips so it waved like a paper-and-tobacco conductor's baton as I talked. "Yeah, I've heard those policies professional hippies get are really sweet. I've never seen you at school, either. I'm at Trost High like the rest of the unwashed masses. I assume you're in a private school to match your private hospital?"

"Stop making me sound like some sort of cancer elitist!" he snapped, knuckles going white on the Jesus handle. "My parents pulled me out of middle school when I got diagnosed and switched me over to homeschooling. I got my GED last year, just started taking a few classes out at the community college."

Grumbling in frustration, I hit the brake hard and swerved behind the tractor trailer, narrowly missing the guardrail as I jerked the car onto the exit ramp. After my tires stopped squealing, I looked over at him, eyes wide and the color draining from his face again despite his features being set in a stubborn picture of composure. Cute. "A college student. I was wondering where that particular flavor of 'I took Psych 101 and therefore have an inherent understanding of the world' came from."

"You're seriously saying that to me. _You're _seriously saying that to me." But rather than being angry about it like he would have had the full right to be, Marco laughed, a light, pleasant sound. "Nothing to go with contrived metaphors and constant pretentiousness like a steaming side helping of hypocrisy."

"Once again, I never said that I wasn't a complete asshole." The cigarette went from my mouth to my hand as I turned into my driveway, from my hand to the pack to my jacket pocket as I pulled the keys out of the ignition and spent a minute tugging my leg around enough to let me get out of the car.

I had lived in the same house my entire life, behind the same two-story red brick walls on the same street of manicured lawns with more or less the same dogs barking at each other from behind the same fences at night for seventeen years. I'd heard the phrase 'Home Is Where The Heart Is' enough times, seen it on the folksy hand-painted sign over our front door every time I left, but it never really sank in. Suburbia felt soulless to me, little matchboxes lined up with the sandpaper strips removed, stripped of their potential and forever holding dry tinder that was painfully unlikely to catch. Still, I could have had it worse. Upper middle-class America was surprisingly well-equipped to deal with teenage terminal illness. Enough money for copays, links to stupid support groups like the one I'd been conned into by my shithead best friend, and plenty of neighbors bearing well-meaning casseroles when the chemicals in my veins made even _looking_ at food a puking offense. My years as a walking tragedy could have gone much more tragically than they actually did.

My parents were in the kitchen when I ushered Marco through the front door, throwing my jacket on the coat rack and ambling down the entry hall. "I brought back a party favor from Support Group!"

"Call me a party favor one more time," Marco hissed, immediately putting on a flawless plastic smile when we walked into the kitchen, waving amiably. "Uh, hi."

"Jean, you made friends?" My looks always did favor my mother, ashy hair and long faces and strong jawlines marking us as kin more effectively than the flat shade of brown in my irises that was all I inherited from my dad, who was sitting at the kitchen table with a USA Today and his pre-dinner cup of coffee.

"I really appreciate the tone of surprise, Mom." I replied enthusiastically, leaning against the counter where she was working on the beginnings of dinner. "This is Marco. He's never heard of Chuck Palahniuk. I've brought him here to educate him. If you need us, we'll be downstairs watching _Fight Club._"

"You'll be in the home theater with the door open watching _Fight Club._" Dad deadpanned, not even bothering to look up from his newspaper.

"We'll be downstairs for less than the time it takes to engage in illicit activity in the name of grabbing my DVD, after which we'll adjourn to the home theater to watch _Fight Club,_" I amended, turning over to Marco with an apologetic look. "I'm sorry for the scrutiny you're being forced to suffer. My dad has this theory that it's impossible for me to have a male friend without wanting to sleep with him. It took Eren getting a girlfriend for the two of us to be allowed to play video games unsupervised."

"Stow it, Jean," Dad said tiredly. I acquiesced and stowed it. There was a stack of medical bills next to his newspaper. Some people didn't deserve the full extent of assholery that I was capable of throwing at them.

"I'm making spaghetti and meatballs, but you guys can eat while you're watching your movie if you want." Mom was far more accepting of the idea, apparently, or maybe she was just ecstatic that someone other than Eren Jaeger was invading her house and eating her food.

Marco shifted uncomfortably. "Um… I'm really sorry, Mrs. Kirschtein, but I'm a vegetarian."

"Ah, yes, I forgot to mention that Marco's a second-generation Belgian hippie." I could practically feel the mercury in Dad's 'done with my son's bullshit' meter rising.

Mom just fawned in the way she normally did, checking the pasta on the stove before turning back to him with a mile-wide smile. "Oh, sweetie, don't apologize, it's not a big deal. We've got marinara sauce in the pantry if that works?"

"Yeah, that'd be awesome, thanks," Marco nodded, his smile shifting from the plastic one to the real thing, which was softer and sat much better on his lips. We left the kitchen after that, and as I swung open the door in the entry hall that lead down to the basement, he said, "Your parents are disarmingly nice."

"Why disarmingly?" I asked.

"Because I expected them to be like you."

A loud peal of laughter burst ungracefully out of my throat, and I hurried down the rest of the stairs, waiting at the bottom for Marco to finish dragging his tank down with him, breathing a little heavily by the time he did. "You just said that you know nothing about me. Have you already decided that I'm not nice?"

"You admitted yourself that you're an asshole," he pointed out, looking around the finished basement that had been my room for several years, a 3D collage of my life decorating the walls and shelves. "Wow. You do a lot of stuff."

"Did a lot of stuff," I corrected him, leaving him to his perusal as I went to dig through the crate of DVDs under my bed.

"You play soccer?"

"Played soccer. I hate the game a little too much to try to play it in my current state, and I have better things to spend my money on then a Special Soccer Leg."

"But you were good at it," Marco frowned, obviously confused as he looked at all the plastic gold figures in various stages of kicking plastic gold soccer balls from the pedestals of trophies on my shelf.

"So?" I shrugged. "I'm good at cooking. I hate it. I was terrible at karate. I did it right up until the day they chopped off my leg, because I loved it. I'm good at drawing. I still do it because I like it and it doesn't require aerobic activity. Your skill level has nothing to do with what you love, Marco. Doing something you hate because you're good at it is how ninety percent of white collar workers end up spending unfulfilling lives in a rat maze of cubicles drinking shitty coffee and actually thinking _Frasier_ is funny."

"Fair enough," he admitted, still combing through the pictures tacked to cork boards and certificates framed on the walls. "But dude, violin lessons-"

"The screeching bothered me, quit after two weeks."

"Polo-"

"Eren made too many horse jokes and I got fed up."

"Jazz Band-"

"Only started playing sax so I could learn 'Careless Whisper,'" I grinned.

"I mean, that's just a lot of off-the-wall, completely unrelated stuff," Marco continued as if I hadn't interjected, dragging his tank behind him and stopping in front of a picture of thirteen-year-old me and Eren at a baseball game, the free hats we'd scored not doing much to cover up the fact that we didn't have eyebrows or eyelashes at that point either. "I can't find any logical connections in you at all, Jean Kirschtein."

"It's easy enough to, really," I walked over to where he was standing, looking at the shelf. "Cancer brings most people to God. It brought me to an obsession with serially reinventing myself. If I was going to die, I was going to die the best possible me there could be."

"That's not logical. That's just vaguely morbid and kind of twisted," Marco said, raising an eyebrow. He had a freckle next to his right eyebrow that sort of made it look like a semicolon, the same confused punctuation that seemed to hang in the air before he continued. "And are you the best possible you now?"

"Depends on who you ask," I laughed.

"How did you meet Eren?" he asked, seamlessly changing the subject as he kept looking at the picture. "Hospital friendship?"

"He beat the shit out of me with a PICC line in his arm on the floor of the oncology ward at Memorial," I nodded, "We started hanging out after that."

"And he's always had that brown eye?"

"It's glass."

"I know that, I'm not stupid," said Marco, a little bit of acid in his voice like a cautionary procedure. "I just wondered why. Like, even the worst insurance could probably get you a glass eye that matched your natural color."

"Oh no, he picked out the brown one when he was twelve, I think," I explained, hooking my thumbs in my pockets. "The thing about people with disabilities is that people tend to pretend they're not there when they look at you. It's a trick to make them feel better about themselves and help them ignore their own mortality. Same reason my mom goes into a fit whenever I wear shorts. Anyway, Eren had the first eye ripped out when he was an infant, had a glass one that matched his baby blues perfectly for several years. But he doesn't like being simplified, so he asked for the brown one. That way, people can't ignore him. He's not a quiet struggler, Eren. He demands to be seen. It's one of the reasons I like him on occasion. That eye, it's-"

"It's a metaphor, yeah, should've seen that coming," Marco sighed, his eyes rolling up towards the ceiling.

I sighed in turn and snapped my fingers impatiently in front of his nose. "No, Marco, it's symbolism, try to keep up. Also, we should go upstairs so no one thinks we're down here screwing instead of discussing literary devices."

We watched _Fight Club_, which I could recite from beginning to end, with plates of spaghetti on our laps in the guest bedroom that Dad had turned into a home theater a few years back, fixed up with a ridiculously comfortable leather couch and a projector bolted to the ceiling that turned the wall into a big screen. Two hours passed like seconds, but I could feel them better in the stiffness when I stood up, stretching and leaning over to pop the DVD out of the player. "So? Sheer genius, right?"

"It was kind of messed up, actually," Marco hummed contemplatively, staring at the blue blankness of the projector screen. "But shirtless Brad Pitt was good."

"You _did_ like it!" I crowed, pumping a fist in the air before snapping the DVD back into its case. "Hold on, hold on, I want to lend you this other book before I take you home."

I hurried downstairs without asking him to follow me (despite a good poker face, I knew the look of someone about to pass out when I saw one, and Marco hadn't been in great shape after the first trip upstairs), grabbing a book from my bedside table and scrawling my name and number across the inside of the cover with a chewed-ended ballpoint pen before heading back up. Marco was waiting in the hallway, a book in his own hands.

"Okay, this one's called _Lullaby,_" I explained, handing it to him with a crooked grin. "It's about this investigative journalist who discovers an ancient African death spell somehow made it into a book of children's poems and now parents are unintentionally killing their kids with lullabies, so he has to track down all the copies of the book and destroy them."

"That's... really interesting, actually." A warped sense of victory lit up in my chest. Marco's look of approval was far prettier than his look of disapproval. He grabbed the book and flipped it over to read the back as he held the thicker one in his hands out. "You know how I read weird books? This one is my favorite. It's by this guy Levi Rivaille, which I highly suspect is a pen name, because if you say the French correctly instead of 'Ruh-vale,' it ends up being pronounced like 'Levi Reevi' and no parent is that cruel."

"And what does Levi Reevi write about?" I asked, turning the well-loved copy of _The Infinity Vault_ over in my hands curiously.

"Well, it's about this young mathematics grad student who finds out she has stage IV liver cancer-"

"_Marco,_" I groaned.

"What?" He replied, looking offended.

"Not a cancer book. I expected better from you," I sighed, holding the book up in reference. "Cancer books _suck. _They're ableist and self-indulgent and I cannot believe you would actually enjoy one."

"And then she finds out that the government is hiding a cure for cancer in a vault with a supposedly unbreakable code, and she has to race against her disease to figure out the code and break into the vault to expose the treachery."

I blinked. "Well, then this isn't a cancer book. It's an action novel that involves cancer. I can get on board with that."

"I have to be home in half an hour," he said.

"I make killer milkshakes; come into the kitchen real quick," I said. "I can get you there in ten minutes."

Marco looked at me for a moment. "But you said you hate cooking."

"Will it keep you here for a few more minutes?" I asked.

"I suppose."

"Then I like cooking."

We'd been in the car for a little over a minute when Marco said, "So what's your prison tattoo?"

I said, "What?"

"I learned your story tonight," he replied, suddenly starting to play with the handle of his oxygen tank. "But you never really said anything about how you ended up at Support Group today."

"Um, it happened very quickly," I shrugged, reaching for a cigarette and frowning slightly. "I started feeling really bad pains in my leg when I was playing soccer. My coach thought I had fractured something, so off to the hospital I went. Nothing on the X-Ray, so I'd obviously pulled a muscle. Nothing from the exam, so there was something else happening. We dicked around until we finally hit the right scan, found the cancer in my lower tibia. Tried chemo for a while, nothing worked, it started to spread, and the leg had to come off when I was fifteen. More chemo and radiation to kill off the stragglers, and then a year of remission, after which Eren dragged me into Support Group today. Pretty simplistic tattoo, really."

Marco nodded, and I prayed to whatever force was listening that he wouldn't apologize. A 'sorry about your leg' to me would mean about as much as a 'sorry about your lungs' to him, and I had the feeling that neither of us did very well with pity.

"What are we listening to?" he asked instead.

I grinned and turned up the volume, loud synthesizers and demanding vocals. "Panic! At the Disco. Exclamation point after the Panic!, that's important."

Marco tilted his head to the side, wincing a little at the onslaught of noise. "Why is it important?"

"Because it demands to be seen," I said.

"I'm on the left up here," he said.

I turned into the driveway of a big, American Dreamy house that really didn't look like it was owned by Belgian hippies, lurching the car to a stop and looking over at him. "So, you have my book and I have yours. That means we have to see each other again."

"It does," he said, a soft smile settling on his lips. Not plastic at all. Something blazed in my chest. "I'll call you when I finish this. We can discuss it over dinner."

"You don't have my number."

"I'm willing to lay money on the fact that it will be in this book when I open it."

"You can read me like a book, Marco Bodt," I grinned.

"Tacky. You didn't even try." He rolled his eyes and got out of the car, lifting his oxygen tank and backpack out after him. "Thanks for the dinner and the movie and the book."

"Right back at you," I nodded, and he shut the door.

I waited until he was back in the house before I pulled _The Infinity Vault_ out if the glove compartment and flipped it open, smiling uncontrollably down at a neat cursive inscription of Marco's name and a phone number, area code in parentheses and all, penned into the title page.

"Tacky," I whispered, and threw the car into reverse.


	3. Chapter 3

I drove home that night feeling oddly light, opening _The Infinity Vault_ at every stoplight and tracing my fingertips over the dents Marco's pen had made in the title page, a stupid grin sitting crookedly on my face. As much of a cynical bastard as I was, there was an air of optimism about everything I did for the rest of the night. I breezed back through my front door and kissed Mom on the cheek, thanked her for allowing me to drag complete strangers through her home at all hours of the night. I sprawled out on the couch in the home theater and did my Precalculus homework with _Fight Club_ replaying in the background, unconsciously smiling through the scenes I'd sat through an hour or two ago with "What? Wait, _what?!_" piping up from beside me as Marco sat up a little straighter and squinted at the screen. I went downstairs, showered and got ready for bed, sitting up against my headboard and turning the book over and over in my hands before flipping it open and adding Marco's number to my phone. After struggling with the idea of texting him for a minute or so, I gave up and called Eren instead, made plans for him to come over to play Mass Effect 3 so he'd stop bitching that I'd stolen my own game back from him prematurely. Sometime after that, I fell asleep curled up on my side, attention fixed on the book perched like a promise on my bedside table.

I wanted to start reading _The Infinity Vault_ as soon as I woke up, but I had a reader's log for _Moby Dick_ due in English the next day and hadn't so much as opened the book. Grumbling vaguely about the stupid, over-conservative PTA blocking good books from the curriculum, I stayed in bed until one o'clock speed-reading and jotting down notes, all the while casting fleeting glances at my hatefully silent phone. Priorities.

By the time Eren walked downstairs, I had fried my brain power-reading and waiting for a ringtone that might never come. He didn't seem to care that I was sprawled out silently across my mattress on my back, still in my pajamas with my prosthetic slumped on the floor where I'd taken it off the night before. He'd seen stranger things over the course of our friendship.

"Hey, Jean," he said.

"Call me Ishmael," I said.

Eren stood still at the foot of the stairs, blinked slowly at me. "What?"

"I've found him, Eren," I replied flatly, not getting up but holding my copy of _Moby Dick_ in the air for reference. "My great white whale. The enigmatic creature that I'll spend my whole life chasing and will eventually drive me to madness."

"Short drive," Eren snorted, throwing his backpack on the ground and going over to turn my Xbox on. "Look, as much as I'd like to indulge you in yet another extended metaphor, Jean-"

"Ishmael!"

He blinked again, controller dangling loosely from his hand as it finally dawned on him. "Wait, are you trying to tell me that Support Group Marco is your Moby Dick?"

"Fascinating, possibly dangerous, and infuriatingly out of my reach? Yes, he is," I nodded, propping myself up in bed long enough to grab the Mass Effect 3 case from my shelf of video games and toss it in Eren's direction. The whole one fake eye thing gave him horrible depth perception, and the lime green plastic slapped him right in the face.

Growling, he snatched the game off the ground and stalked over to the TV on the other side of my room. "You need professional help, Jean Kirschtein."

"ISHMAEL."

"Yeah, well listen here, Douchemael!" Eren snapped, snatching my leg off the ground and throwing it at me, depth perception throwing off his aim to the point that the prosthetic landed harmlessly on my bed, which seemed to make him even angrier. "I've got five days until they rip my other eye out, and I want to see the end of this game before I go blind, so you can take your Great White Pretension and manic pixie dream-boy and shove them straight up your ass until I rescue the fucking universe, okay?!"

I felt sort of bad in the wake of his angry explosion, both for needling him and for the fact that I'd taken the game back in the first place. Eren was rightfully touchy about the fact that he had a limited window of time left to see the big, shitty world, and I supposed that as his best friend it was my job to indulge him, even if instead of looking off the top of the Eiffel Tower or gazing at a sky untouched by light pollution, all he wanted to do was finish Mass Effect 3. Grimacing, I shuffled over onto the edge of my bed and dropped the copy of _Moby Dick_ down on the mess of blankets. "Okay. You can just pop out my memory card and put yours in; I don't even think I have any save files on there."

While Eren messed around with my TV and game system and the tangle of wires connecting them, I rolled up one side of the shorts I'd worn to bed and started the tedious process of putting my leg on. I'd gotten faster at it over time; after two years it was almost as commonplace as putting on socks. Silicone liner, compression sleeve, a little bit of water and rubbing alcohol in the socket of the actual leg, wiggle around a bit, stand up, and there you had it. Mom didn't like watching me suit up, something about her baby not being as whole and healthy as he used to be, but I never really saw the big deal. It wasn't _that_ disturbing. I'd seen Eren pop out his glass eye as a party trick enough times that nothing bothered me anymore.

"Is it as good as Mass Effect 2?" I asked, swapping the oversized t-shirt I'd slept in out for a hoodie and digging around in my clothes hamper for a pair of jeans that didn't look too dirty.

"Better. Better graphics, better story, better combat system," he mumbled absently, his thumbs flitting over the controller as I shimmied into my jeans and grabbed _The Infinity Vault _before walking over to sit next to him in the gaming chairs I'd gotten for my last birthday. "Some of the calls you have to make are brutal, too."

We sat like that for the next hour or so, with me flipping arbitrarily through the first few pages of _The Infinity Vault_ while Eren controlled the adventures of Commander Shepard and his valiant crew in their efforts to save humanity from the Reapers. The thing about the Mass Effect series was that while you got to shoot aliens and blow things up, you had to face moral dilemmas while doing it. The entire game changed based on the choices you made, and my style differed greatly from Eren's. He was all impulsive decisions and huge military movements that brought about quick victories at the cost of hundreds of lives.

"Dude, your Shepard sucks," I observed mildly over the top of the book, watching Eren plunge headlong into an unnecessary battle.

"Yeah, well at least I don't play the hero and throw myself under the bus and _lose the game_ for the sake of moral high ground with a fictional character," he shot back, his blue eye rolling upward, brown one staring forward.

I shrugged and turned the page. "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

"That's from _The Dark Knight,_ you asshole, don't even pretend that's one of your deep musings."

"Have fun with your genocide, Eren," I said loftily, going back to the book. _The Infinity Vault_ revolved around the life of Priscilla Romano, a graduate student in mathematics with a dry, witty voice and a heavily logical outlook. I liked her. I especially liked how she made the doctor delivering her diagnosis of terminal liver cancer uncomfortable by mathematically analyzing the probability of her living more than two months. Eren gripped his controller until the plastic creaked and screamed at the television at random intervals, and I sank deeper into Priscilla's story, gained a tentative respect and a little bit of skepticism towards her finacé, who risked his job as a clerk in the office of a Senator to sneak her information about how the government was supposedly sitting on a cure for cancer in a vault beneath the CDC in Atlanta. I raised an eyebrow as the two of them discovered that the vault operated on an algorithmic code sequence that changed daily, giving it infinite possibilities for a passcode to get in that was impossible to figure out unless you knew the algorithm used to write the code. The finacé miraculously managed to get his hands on a few of the codes that had been used in the past, and Priscilla began trying to work out the algorithm by herself, determined to beat the clock placed on her heartbeats and break into the vault. Not to save herself - nothing short of a miracle can magic away cancer when you've been given less than two months until you bite the dust - but to expose the government's treachery in hiding the cure for so long. Priscilla was in a hospital bed scribbling furiously in her notebook when my phone went off.

At first, I thought it was just a sound effect on the game, but when I glanced up to see Eren shooting his way down a hall full of hostile aliens and yelling incoherent battle cries, I realized that I'd left my phone sitting on my bedside table at the the screen had lit up the wall behind it with a faint blue wash of light. It took a minute for me to get out of the chair, an unfortunate side effect that came with only having one leg that possessed any sort of muscle power, and by the time I made it over to the desk, the screen of my phone had gone dark again. Eren yelled more profanity at digital people who couldn't hear him. I swiped my finger across the screen and opened up the (Impossible! No! _Yes!_) text from Marco, a victorious grin on my face as we engaged in a short conversation.

_Marco: I finished Lullaby. Twisted. I highly suspect that you're a twisted individual for enjoying it._

_Me: I put Twizzlers to shame. I thought you said you would call when you were done._

_Marco: I'm at the mall. Too loud for a phone call. I'll be home in like an hour or two._

_Me: Wouldn't peg you for a mall rat. What are you shopping for?_

_Marco: ...A copy of Fight Club so I can read it._

I laughed loudly, sticking my phone in my pocket, and Eren paused the game long enough to shoot me a questioning look. "What's so funny?"

"I found my harpoon," I replied.

Eren said, "You're fucking weird, man," and went back to shooting aliens.

The day wore on pretty much the same, Eren growing increasingly frustrated with Commander Shepard's dilemma while I put down _The Infinity Vault_ long enough to write up my reader's log. What was the point of those things, anyway, I wondered. It really wasn't anything more than proof that you read the book. Kind of contrived, kind of stupid, but also kind of ten percent of my grade for the semester, so I soldiered through it - and by 'soldiered,' the actual definition was closer to 'wrote up the log while whining loudly to Eren about the American public school system until he threatened to sodomize me with my own prosthetic.'

Two o'clock became five o'clock, and the only blip in the continuum was Mom coming down with a plate of boneless wings and two sodas that we both inhaled. The closer Mass Effect 3 drew to its pinnacle, the closer Eren got to the edge of his seat, perching there as he practically destroyed my Xbox controler under the brutal onslaught of his thumbs. I put down my now-finished homework and watched him growl and curse his way through the final battle, triggering the last cutscene, and-

"THAT'S BULLSHIT!" He howled, chucking the controller across the room and throwing his hands in the air. "All that work! Three games and a franchise the size of fucking Russia and _Shepard dies?!_"

I shrugged and leaned down to pick up _The Infinity Vault _again. "You either die a hero or-"

"Shut the hell up, Jean!"

"There's always Dragon Age," I offered, gesturing over at my game shelf.

"_Fuck_ Dragon Age!" Eren thundered, launching out of the gaming chair and kicking it over on its side. I watched him from my own chair with a raised eyebrow, half-afraid to move. Eren in a bad mood was kind of like the T-Rex in _Jurassic Park._ If you didn't move, he wouldn't see you and would continue exhausting his rage on inanimate objects. He finally calmed down enough to set his chair upright and collapse into it with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, nostrils flared as he watched the credits roll across the screen, looking almost wounded. "God, I just... I wanted to see one last victory, you know?"

"Well, you saved humanity. You destroyed the Reapers. I guess it depends on your definition of victory." Something heavy and uncomfortable settled in my chest. The whole situation was shit, really. A whole world full of evil dictators and abusers and murderers and thieves, and it was Eren losing his sight, Eren losing his last shot at a normal life. You learn pretty quickly the first time they put a chemo needle in your arm that life isn't fair. I knew this already, but it was the first time in a long time that the fact made me feel so helpless. Eren and I had never operated under the terms of "nice," didn't rely on each other for condolences. In fact, I was pretty sure that if I even tried to say something comforting at that particular moment, I'd end up getting punched in the face. I wasn't there to be his shoulder to cry on. I was there to be the asshole who told him to pick himself up by the bootstraps and kept needling him until he did it out of spite. "Besides, it's a video game, man. There are things you should be lamenting never getting to see again more than Mass Effect."

"Speaking of which," he sighed, pulling his ringing phone out of his jeans pocket and swiping at the screen, bringing it to his ear. "Hey, babe."

I couldn't make out what Mikasa was saying on the other end of the line, nor did I really care. She'd never liked me much (something about me being an self-important douchebag. Perish the thought!), and therefore I didn't have enough shits to waste by giving them about her. While Eren made a disturbingly fast shift from and angry rhinoceros to a cooing lovebird, I made an honest attempt not to gag and went back to_ The Infinity Vault. _I was starting to think that Priscilla's fiancé was actually working for the government.

After a few minutes, Eren hung up the phone and looked at me with a perfectly-executed plastic smile. "Jean, I love you."

"You might want to inform your girlfriend; something tells me she might not take well to me turning you gay," I deadpanned. "What do you want?"

"She wants me to come over," he whined plaintively, flopping back on my bed and staring at the ceiling. "Her parents are on that cruise, y'know? I just need you to drive me over and agree to cover for me when I tell my mom I'm staying the night here."

"No."

"Jeaaaaaaaaaan."

"Absolutely not." Crossing my arms, I snapped the book shut and glared up at him. "I've seen your mother when she's pissed. I'm not risking an angry Carla Jaeger on my ass just so you can get laid. Not a chance in hell, Eren."

Five minutes later, we were lurching out of my driveway and I was staring out the windshield with a look of disbelief. "How the hell do I end up in these situations?"

"Because despite being an arrogant bastard, you have a soft spot for making people happy," Eren said simply, turning the radio down and looking over at me as I pulled up onto the freeway. "So. Support Group Marco. I'm guessing your warped Cancer Kid Singles Mixer idea worked out for you."

I smiled so widely that I looked like a complete imbecile. "He came over for dinner and we watched _Fight Club_ and loaned each other books."

"Spare me the smutty details, Jean, my pure little ears can't handle it," he replied dramatically, doing his best to look offended but breaking out into a shit-eating grin instead. "You _like_ him."

Slamming on the brake just short of a stoplight, I smirked and placed a cigarette in the corner of my mouth. "I do. He's different."

"I'm not going to tell you to dish or whatever the fuck is that girls do. Frankly, I don't want to know the finer points of what you two get up to," Eren snorted, kicking his feet up on the dashboard and turning the radio back up to its usual blasting level. "Just keep me posted, yeah?"

"He's supposed to call later," I muttered around the cigarette, gunning it out of the intersection and whipping around the corner by the church where Support Group had met the day before.

Mikasa lived in a big gated community a few blocks down from the church, a worse example of soul-bleaching suburbia than my own neighborhood. Eren had to give me the gate code and wait for me to hang out the driver's side window to punch it in, but after a minute I was burning rubber up a long driveway, the screeching wheels and blaring speakers bringing a very irritated Mikasa Ackerman storming out onto her porch, all smooth black hair and angry dark eyes glaring at me. "Are you nuts?! Turn that shit down!"

I turned the radio up as far as it could possibly go, Fall Out Boy rattling the neighbors' windows as I smiled sweetly and slowly raised a middle finger in her direction.

"You're a dick," Eren grumbled, clambering out of the car.

"Remember that when I'm lying to cover your horny teenage ass, Jaeger," I said boredly, examining my fingernails and rolling the window down to shout after him as he climbed up the porch steps. "And for the love of god, play it safe! It would be a terrible tragedy for you to have a bastard child and not be able to see its unholy little face!"

Eren shouted something angrily back at me, but I couldn't hear it over the music and my own laughter as I took off back down the road.

By the time I got home, Mom was up in arms because I'd missed dinner, Dad was working late (again), and at the worst possible point of the earful of lecture I was getting, my phone started buzzing in my pocket.

"Uh, Mom…" I started.

"And I get that you want to spend these next few days with Eren, but we are your _family,_ and-"

"Mom."

"Don't interrupt me, Jean!"

I cast a distressed look down at my vibrating jeans, carding a hand through my hair. "I just kind of need to…"

She wasn't hearing any of it. "What you _need _to do is be a part of this family again! I saw you once today! _Once!_ I know you think that your dad and I are just lame adults, but we love you, sweetie, and we-"

"Okay, I love you too, Mom, but I've really got to take this call." Excusing myself with that, I ducked downstairs into the basement, answering the phone a split second before it would have skipped over to voicemail. "Marco."

"So, should I launch into my detailed review of _Lullaby,_ or can we have some idle conversation first?" His voice sounded smoother on the other end of the phone, the speaker not picking up the hiss of his oxygen tank or the small rattles between his breaths.

"I can cope with idle conversation," I grinned, flopping backwards onto my bed and grabbing for the remote to put my TV on mute. "Nice weather we're having."

"Shut up," he laughed, and I could picture him lying on his own bed in his big American Dreamy not-really-hippie house, staring up at a different ceiling than I was. "Do you use everything anyone says as a springboard for sarcasm?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

Marco sighed, a whooshing crackle on the other end of the phone. "Fine, _I'll _ask the honest questions. How was your day?"

"Can't complain," I shrugged, grabbing _The Infinity Vault_ off the nightstand and flipping arbitrarily through the pages I'd already read. "Did some English homework, watched my idiot best friend yell at a video game, drove said idiot best friend to his girlfriend's house so he has the chance to see her naked before going permanently blind…"

"What?!"

"You know, just a day in the life." I had to bite down on the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing, rolling over onto my stomach and watching a silent football game run across my TV screen. "So, you tore through that book pretty quickly. Opinions?"

"The plot was messed up, but I love the writing style," Marco said, obviously trying not to sound like he was neither enthused or displeased. "I think I like _Fight Club_ better. The writing is less clunky. How goes _The Infinity Vault_?"

I flipped through a few more pages, finally getting to my bookmark. "I'm about three-fourths done. Stunning writing. Something about Priscilla's voice is just very… accurate."

"It's because Levi Rivaille's pretty much the only living person I've heard of who can accurately portray how it feels to be dying," Marco hummed in assent, and a moment of silence followed where I could hear music playing in the background. Bob Dylan. A smirk twitched at the corners of my mouth.

"I also like that she's a real hero," I followed up, drumming my fingers over the worn pages. "She's not in it for her own cure. She's doing it to save all the other people who still have a chance and make sure all the crooks pay for it. Now the fiancé, he smells funny to me. Is he with the bad guys, or…?"

"No spoilers," said Marco. I could hear the smile in his voice.

"Oh, come on! You're killing me!"

"Finish the book!"

"I will, after I get off the phone with you!" I shot back, laughing. "But first we need to arrange a time and place to meet where we can swap our books back. Do you like coffee?"

"I like tea, which is readily available at most coffee shops, so there's potential in your line of thought."

"Excellent," I nodded, closing the book and grinning. "There's a coffee shop across the street from Trost High. I can meet you there tomorrow after school lets out at three, if you don't have class."

"My only class tomorrow is my Russian Lit class from noon to two, so we're good," he said, and maybe I was kidding myself, but he almost sounded brighter. Excited.

"Russian Lit?" Raising an eyebrow even though he couldn't see it, I grabbed for my jacket and dug the pack of cigarettes out of the pocket, holding one between my teeth. "I've swapped books with a boy who drinks tea, listens to Bob Dylan _and_ reads Dostoyevsky on the side? I'm dwarfed by your level of sophistication."

"Shut up!" Marco laughed again, the sound dying as a soprano murmur sounded in the background. "Yeah, Mom. Jean. Jean from Support Group; I don't know any other Jeans. Yeah. No, we're trading back over coffee tomorrow. Yeah. I'm sure he doesn't - _Mom._ Fine."

He sighed, sounding utterly mortified. "My mother would like to know if you'd join us for dinner after we trade our books back tomorrow, and assuming that you say yes, she would also like to know if tofu stir fry is okay with you."

"I've never had tofu," I said in lieu of a yes. "Tell your mom that I look forward to it. Anyway, I'd better go if I want to finish this book tonight and not be a zombie at school tomorrow."

"Okay," Marco said. The line was silent but still live for several seconds. "Are you gonna hang up?"

"I was waiting for you to hang up."

"Don't turn this into a bad eighties movie, Jean."

I snorted, sitting up and leaning against the headboard. "Nobody puts baby in a corner."

"Hang up and go read!" He was absolutely horrible at sounding stern through a smile.

"Don't tell me how to live my life, Marco. I'll hang up when it suits me." I waited another few seconds, listened to him laugh, and then hung up.

I tore through the rest of _The Infinity Vault,_ through Priscilla fighting through her worsening health in order to make it to Atlanta only to end up in the hospital the day after her arrival, still feverishly working on cracking the algorithm while her fiancé organized an almost too-flawless plan to get to the vault and obtain the cure. Words and pages and chapters blurred into one another until I was finally on the last paragraph:

_The thing about dying is that humans aren't nearly afraid of it as we think we are. The true fear is that of dying without a legacy, and I've beaten that obstacle with this last pencil stroke, cracked the algorithm and all the other mysteries in one now that I've_

"What?" I whispered, turning the page. The other side was blank.

"What?" I said aloud, shutting the book with a terrifyingly calm motion and laying it carefully on the mattress.

"_WHAT?!"_ I shouted, ignoring that it was nearing midnight as I scrambled for my phone and sent an onslaught of text messages to Marco.

_Me: WAIT NO WHAT_

_Me: THE BOOK JUST_

_Me: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME_

_Me: MARCO. TELL ME THERE'S AN EPILOGUE OUT THERE. I'M GOING TO PUNCH A WALL._

_Marco: I'm laughing so hard that my mom just came in to check on me. No, unfortunately there's no epilogue._

Groaning, I fell back onto my mattress, blinking slowly. Usually I could come up with witty retorts, but only one thing came to mind for the offense of ending a book mid-sentence. "What a dick move."

I'd only just sat up to get my leg off and change into pajamas when my phone buzzed. Thinking it was Marco, I snatched it up and pawed the screen angrily, bringing it to my ear. "What the _fuck,_ man?!"

"I need you to come get me," Eren choked out tearfully on the other end of the line.

"What?"

"I'm really sorry, man, I just… please come get me," he replied thickly, a sob crackling over the line before it went dead. I didn't need three guesses to figure out the content of the impending shitstorm.

Grabbing my car keys off the desk, I spared one last look at _The Infinity Vault_ sitting there seemingly innocent on my bed, the only thing infinite about it its incompleteness.

So much for not being a zombie at school.


	4. Chapter 4

As it turned out, I didn't go to school on Monday.

It would have been a little hard to leave when I had an inconsolable, sobbing Eren Jaeger curled up in the center of my mattress, who had been there keeping up a steady wail since midnight. All told, I'd gotten about an hour of sleep somewhere between five and six, curled up in one of my gaming chairs in the eerily silent moments after Eren had lamented himself into a brief period of unconsciousness. My alarm went off at half-past-six, woke him up, and the klaxon of his teenage angst started like it had never stopped. In all those hours, he hadn't given an exact description of what had happened, but between the frankly ugly sobs, repeated mantras of "How could she, we _promised,_" and the fact that I'd picked him up at the end of Mikasa's driveway looking like a puppy that someone had abandoned on the street, I didn't have to be Priscilla Romano to figure out the breakup algorithm.

Mom came down around seven to see why I wasn't upstairs wolfing down breakfast yet, and I rose up over the back of my chair, making frantic cutting motions across my neck with my hand and shaking my head emphatically. She looked at Eren. She looked at me. She backed slowly out of the room. I took a moment to be grateful that at least sometimes, she really did know when to leave things alone. Eren kept wailing as I grabbed my phone and texted Thomas, who wasn't so much my friend as a kid I'd played soccer with since toddlerhood, told him I was having a Bad Leg Day and would really appreciate it if he could grab my homework for me. 'Bad Leg Day' was pretty much all it took to get out of commitments, one of the very small set of perks that came with being a cancer-surviving amputee. As it was, my leg did actually ache a little, probably because I'd been on it for almost twenty-four hours and had fallen asleep in a chair, so I reasoned that at least I wasn't a complete liar. I still had a pile of doctor's excuses in my desk big enough to get me through the rest of my high school career, so no issues there. The only problem seemed to be with weeping mess currently leaking snot and tears all over my comforter.

Eren died down to a pitiful sniffle after another half-hour, sitting up in the middle of the mattress and watching me, one swollen and reddened blue eye and one impassive brown one, as I sat in my chair and flipped through passages of _The Infinity Vault_ that I had glazed over the night before. I looked up at him briefly over the top of the book. "It could've been worse, you know."

"How the _hell_ could it have been worse?" he hiccuped, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around his legs.

"She could have gone to dump you and stopped mid-sentence."

Seemingly not having the will to get up and hit me, Eren just glared at me instead. "I want to play Dragon Age."

I sighed and grabbed the case for Dragon Age: Origins off my game shelf, loaded it into my Xbox and handed Eren a controller as the ethereal theme music floated out of my TV speakers. "If I go take a shower, will I come back to you trying to hang yourself from my ceiling fan?"

"I've come close to death enough times that I have no desire to chase after it, Jean," Eren said flatly, scrolling hurriedly through the create-a-character options and starting the first cutscene.

"Fair enough," I shrugged, heading off to the bathroom. My little basement cave had been intended to be what's called a 'mother-in-law suite' for obvious reasons in common suburban vernacular, came with its own bathroom and a sliding glass door next to the TV stand that led out to a patio with a creaky old bench swing that overlooked the carefully-kept order of our back yard. A nice enough setup, one I liked even though Mom had tried to get me to move upstairs after my amputation, fussing about the stairs until I had proved at least a hundred times that I was able to move on them without tumbling to my death. Despite her hounding me about interacting with my family more often the night before, I decided that I probably wouldn't be going upstairs for the rest of the day as I got out of the shower and grabbed a few Advil from the medicine cabinet. For all my bullshit excuses, it really was shaping up to be a Bad Leg Day, the ache increasing until I finally decided to just pull on my jeans and hop back into my room, dropping the prosthetic next to my gaming chair before collapsing down into it and checking on Eren's progress with Dragon Age. "Good call on picking a Dalish Elf. That's a fun playthrough."

"Not like I'll get a chance to do the other ones," he grumbled bitterly, shooting a glance in my direction and eyeing the knot I'd tied where the knee of my jeans should have been to keep the fabric from dragging the ground. "Bad Leg Day?"

"Think I was just on it too much yesterday." Shaking my head dismissively, I grabbed a pencil and my sketchbook off the shelf before flipping it open to a blank page and smoothing a hand over the paper's surface. "Are you feeling any better?"

"No," he said, grip tightening on his controller.

"Okay," I nodded, starting to draw without any real ideas as to what I was drawing.

The rest of the morning passed with Eren playing the game much more silently than I'd ever seen him play a video game in his life, not a single shout at the screen in the heat of battle or growl of rage when a plot twist came up. I ended up doodling several scenes from _The Infinity Vault_, looking up to check on him occasionally. Noon came and went, and I ended up calling for takeout to avoid the inevitable confrontation with my mother that would have happened if I'd ask her to provide us with food while we played hooky to let Eren convalesce through his breakup. I was halfway through a sketch of Priscilla sitting in her Atlanta hospital room curled around her notebook when Eren started crying into his mu shu pork, and I realized at the worst possible moment that I was trapped with an emotionally volatile teenage boy, and therefore cut off from my other obligations. Sighing, I picked up my phone.

Marco picked up after two rings. "Hey, what's up?"

"I unfortunately can't make our coffee appointment," I said.

"What happened?" he asked, sounding apprehensive. I held the phone away from me so the speaker could pick up one of Eren's particularly anguished wails before bringing it back to my ear in time to hear Marco make a vaguely confused noise. "Jean, what… who is that?"

"That was Eren," I sighed, rubbing a hand across my face, before waving it in front of Eren's line of sight. He jumped, his bad depth perception not letting him know whether I was close enough to hit him or not. "Hey. Eren, focus. Look at me. Will Support Group Marco make this better or worse?"

"I don't fucking care, man," he sniffed, batting my hand away.

"Would you be okay with maybe coming over and using some of those 'coping with loss' techniques they no doubt teach you in Support Group?" I asked exhaustedly, leaning back in my chair. "Where are you right now?"

"Um… at the coffee shop, actually. My class let out early." I glanced over at my clock. Half past two. "I was just going to sit here and read _Fight Club _until you got out of school, but -"

I cut him off with a snort, waving my hand dismissively, almost like I'd forgotten that he couldn't see me. "I didn't even go to school today. It's easy to get to my house from where you are. Take a left at the red light by the school, keep driving down Sina Street until you get to the gas station, hang a right, and you'll see the sign for my development."

"Okay, but-"

"Oh, and Marco? Hurry. I don't know how much longer I can hold down the fort."

I hung up the phone before he could reply, raking a hand through my hair and listening to Eren blubber for a few more minutes before leaning over with a groan to roll up my jeans and put my leg back on. I didn't care if the human fountain curled up in my other gaming chair saw me looking like an invalid, but for whatever reason, Marco was a different story, worth the dull ache that crept up to the juncture of my hip when I settled my weight on the prosthetic. I decided to talk to mom about maybe getting a new liner.

Marco showed up about ten minutes later, trundling his oxygen tank down the steps after him with one hand while the other held precariously onto a drink carrier with three coffees and the fourth opening filled with a variety of creamers and sugar. By that point, Eren had sunk back into his previous state of numbness, thumbs twitching on the game controller but otherwise immobile as he hunched forward in the chair. Marco stood there looking at the two of us for a second as he caught his breath, setting the drinks down on top of my game shelf and perching on the edge of my bed. "Hey, your mom let me in."

"You look nice," I said, suddenly acutely aware of my messy hair and how there were almost definitely bags under my eyes. Marco had on a gray cardigan and a green v-neck, jeans that were in much better shape than mine, a line of freckles almost perfectly underscoring the plastic tubing that angled down across his cheekbones.

"Thank you," he grinned, and I swore the room actually got a little brighter before he grabbed two of the coffees and walked over to where Eren was sitting, folding himself up on the floor beside him. Not in front to be confrontational, but just at a slight angle. Easygoing. Approachable. In that moment, I was inexplicably terrified of Marco Bodt. Anyone who knew how to play into a person's psychology that well was dangerous. If he had half a mind to do it, he would have been capable of having someone like a puppet on a string. I looked pointedly away as he turned his attention to Eren, tone bright and conversational. "How's it going, Eren? I thought you were supposed to be over at your girlfriend's."

At that, Eren let out something that was almost a roar, launching out of his chair and throwing the controller in his hands down so hard that it bounced off the carpet and landed in Marco's lap. Marco blinked. "Touchy subject?"

"She said she couldn't wait until after the surgery," Eren practically spat, beginning to pace across the floor between the chairs and the television. "Said it had been _weighing on her for a long time._ Fuck that! She didn't want dumping a blind guy to be on her conscience!"

My mouth gaped open slightly. A whole night of me sitting with him, of listening to him cry and rage and play video games, and he'd opened up like a rolodex of teenage tragedy for Marco in less than a minute. I considered running upstairs and making myself a tinfoil hat. He had to be some variety of psychic. Instead, I got up slowly and went over to grab my coffee, dumping more sugar in than was probably healthy. "You're implying that the harpy actually _has_ a conscience. That's your first mistake."

"Shut the fuck up, Jean!" he raged, rounding on me briefly before going back to his pacing, hands in tight fists at his sides. "And you know what she had the _audacity_ to tell me?! That she couldn't handle it! We've been together for a year, I'm days from going blind, and _she can't handle it?!_"

I leaned against the wall, popped a Marlboro Red between my lips, and watched the show, Marco stammering for comforting words while Eren's pacing became an angry spiral that eventually led to him snatching a pillow off my bed and absolutely whaling on the floor with it. I was used to these sorts of outbursts, but Marco looked vaguely terrified, sipping uncertainly at his coffee as I walked over and sat down next to him, legs stretched out in front of me since I didn't feel like messing with positioning all the metal and plastic. "So, I've come to the conclusion that Levi Rivaille is an unethical prick."

"Yeah?" he said, looking away from the tornado that Eren had become and tilting his head. "What makes you say that?"

"He violated the trust of his readers." I grabbed for my sketchbook again, starting to fill in the finer lines of the drawing, the gaunt hollowness of Priscilla's cheeks, the margins on the paper in her notebook. "I mean, I get that Priscilla died, fine, whatever. But the story wasn't finished. Authors have a duty to their audience to see things through. Mr. Rivaille had an obligation to finish the story even if it ended without Priscilla, and he didn't do that. He didn't even provide an epilogue to clear up those burning questions. Was the cure real? Did Priscilla figure out the algorithm correctly? Was the fiancé working with the government the whole time? We have a right to know these things, regardless of whether or not the narrator made it through the story."

"I've tried to find out, believe me," Marco shrugged, pulling his knees up to his chest and watching Eren exhaust himself of his rage until he slumped back into his gaming chair and picked up the controller again. "I've been sending him letters care of his publisher ever since I read the book, but he never answers. He hasn't even published anything in four years. After _The Infinity Vault_ came out, he just packed up, moved to Paris, and completely dropped off the face of the Earth."

"Probably running away because he couldn't deal with the backlash," I observed mildly.

"_Couldn't deal with it!"_ Eren screeched suddenly, making both of us jump as he vaulted out of his chair and went back to using my pillow as a bludgeoning tool against the wall.

"Eren. Dude. _Dude,_" I muttered in my best attempt at consolation, handing my coffee and sketchbook to Marco and scrambling to my feet, snatching the pillow out of his hand on one of his backswings. "That's a Sealy Posturepedic pillow, bromigo. Don't fuck with my specially formulated side sleeper neck support. Besides, there's no satisfaction in hitting stuff with a pillow. You need to _break_ something."

Hands groping and empty, still blinded by rage, Eren turned in a tight circle before reaching up onto the the top shelf and grabbing one of my larger soccer trophies, holding it over his head like a heterochromiac King Kong clutching a golden, paralyzed Ann Darrow.

"Do it!" I shouted.

Eren hurled the trophy down so hard that the little plastic soccer player snapped off the top and went cartwheeling through the air, missing Marco's head by about three inches. Letting out a growl that was equal parts satisfaction and frustration, he then proceeded to stomp on what was left of the trophy until the column splintered and split away from the marble base, reduced to so many shimmering shards of plastic.

"But your trophies-" Marco started, his hand half-raised.

"Are accolades for a sport I never loved and memories of a life I no longer have, and are put to much better use as an outlet for my best friend's very righteous anger than as dust collectors on a shelf that always needs room for more books and video games," I cut him off, pulling down a state championship trophy from my summer league and handing it to Eren with a wide, half-deranged grin. "Go on, another one! Smash them all! Let it all out, man!"

Eren tore through the trophies like a man possessed, grinding figurines into so many severed golden limbs beneath his sneakers, demolishing towers of black polyethylene overlaid with shiny contact paper, tearing down every single tournament and goal that I ever accomplished with two good legs. By the time he got to the last couple of trophies, he'd started up that slow wail again. By the time he stomped the last intact piece into the carpet, his whole body was heaving with sobs, swaying uncertainly enough that I took a step forward to steady him. The pain rocketing up my leg was bad enough to pull a low groan out of my chest as he collapsed against my shoulder in a quivering mess, but I gritted my teeth and told myself that this was what true friends did, let their buddies smash their childhoods to smithereens in the name of lost love and regaining some sense of control in a world that was slipping through their fingers, held them while they lamented all the things they'd never have again.

"It's not fair," he hiccupped, tears dampening the fabric of my t-shirt as his hands balled up in the fabric. "It still hurts, it still _fucking_ hurts."

"I know," I nodded, looking at Marco intently over his shoulder. "That's the way it is. 'Pain is an energy, and energy cannot be created or destroyed, only molded into different forms.' That's from _The Infinity Vault._ Unethical prick though he may be, Levi Rivaille's got some pretty deep shit in that book. You should read it sometime."

"I'll hit you up once I've learned fucking Braille," Eren laughed tearfully.

By the time Eren's mom came to pick him up, he was still on shaky ground emotionally, but calm enough to be let out among the general populace. Marco and I spent the next hour after he left throwing trophy confetti into my bathroom trash can, making small talk about books and school.

"I can't believe your mom didn't come down here when Eren want all Hulk Smash on your trophies," he said eventually, shaking his head and collapsing into one of the gaming chairs, letting out thin puffs of air.

"She knew you were down here and trusted you to control the situation," I replied, tossing the head of the last poor dead plastic soccer player (I'd decided to name him Ned Stark) into the trash can before sitting in the chair beside him, a crooked grin tugging at my lips. "She likes you. You're pretty high on the esteem ladder of boys I've brought home."

Marco laughed lightly at that, a breathless tenor hum that seemed to set something in the air between us on a precipice. "Yeah, I noticed that you're pretty comfortable about being out to your parents."

"You know, terminal illness makes it really easy to come out," I shrugged, flicking through my empty text messages and kicking my real leg up on my bottom shelf. "Turns out my parents don't care who I'm fucking as long as I'm alive to do it. Why do you mention it; is sailing not as smooth back home for you?"

"Dude," he snorted, eyes flicking upwards. "Belgian hippie parents, remember? My folks have believed in free love for ages. It's all good here."

"Good to know." Stretching out my arms, I got up from the chair with a sigh, looking towards the door that led upstairs. "Speaking of which, I believe I was given an invitation to dinner at your place tonight?"

"So you were." Another one of those smiles stretched across his face, making him seem like some sort of self-contained sun. He had a dimple on his right cheek that was far more endearing than it should have been. I began to regret not making that tinfoil hat. Marco was still a little short of breath as he got up, moving slower than usual towards the staircase. "I'm just going to warn you, my family's a little… different?"

"Marco, need I remind you that we just spent the last hour cleaning up the fallout of my best friend destroying my possessions with my full blessing? Nothing fazes me anymore."

He still looked nervous the entire trip to his house, but all I got out of that nervousness was that he had a habit of biting his lip when he was apprehensive about something. Cute.

His house was still the same big, American Dreamy, distinctly-not-hippie domicile that I remembered from a few days before, a long driveway that led up to a two-car garage where Marco parked his Mom's minivan next to a blue Prius before directing me through a side door. Inside, the place looked like a fucking hookah bar, the living room that the garage door opened to outfitted with huge floor pillows instead of Ikea furniture like what should have been in a house like that. The distinct smell of patchouli clung heavily to the air, and I found myself wondering how Marco's fragile lungs could handle it given the fact that it made _me_ feel a little wheezy, but my train of thought was cut off by the same pretty middle-aged woman I'd seen parked outside of Support Group walking in through an archway that led to the kitchen, bare feet, tank top and a gauzy tie-dyed cotton skirt that fell to her ankles, bangles jingling around thin wrists and wild black curls that brushed her freckled shoulders. The only difference appearance-wise between Marco and his mother was that her eyes were very blue. They both shared the same slender build and inherently kind faces, even had the same light-up smile, I found out as she grinned at the two of us and waved us into the kitchen. "Hi, hi! Oh, you must be Jean, it's so nice to meet you, honey, come on, sit down, dinner's almost done."

Beside me, Marco groaned faintly. I just grinned. So my mom wasn't the only one who did the whole obsessive hospitality thing. "Thanks for having me over, Mrs. Bodt."

"Oh please, It's Karma," she waved a hand through the air, bangles jingling in her wake. I raised an eyebrow, turning my head and wondering how my companion had gotten off comparatively lucky with _Marco_ for a name. I'd met my share of Rainbows and Serenitys in my life. Maybe the Bodts weren't pushy hippies.

As it turned out, Marco's dad was a little more suited for the American Dreamy house and the typical upper-middle-class-parent archetype, still wearing a dress shirt and tie from what I assumed was work even though he was also barefoot, sitting on one of the jewel-toned pillows looped around a low table that I guessed was their normal eating surface.

"You asked about how I had good insurance. Dad sells it," Marco explained as I tried to make it look like it wasn't a huge affair for me to sit on the floor, fiddling around with my leg and eventually making it to a relatively normal position after a minute. "I was the death of my parents' freedom. They traded their Volkswagen bus for the minivan, settled down in suburbia, and became closet beatniks."

"We're hardly closeted," his mom said, rolling her eyes in a perfect mirror of a look I'd seen on Marco several times before as she moved around the table setting down plates of tofu stir-fry and bowls of rice. She ruffled Marco's hair as she passed, earning a scowl. "And we wouldn't trade you for all the music festivals and peace rallies in the world, sweetheart. You know that."

As it turns out, tofu wasn't that bad. I was too much of a carnivore to ever entertain the idea of picking up a vegetarian lifestyle, but it was nice for a change. I spent most of the meal discussing books with Marco, who had coincidentally finished _Fight Club_ and wanted to know whether he should start _Choke _or _Invisible Monsters_ next, although I did end up spending some time talking soccer with his dad, trying not to smirk at the memory of the golden plastic graveyard waiting in my trash can back home. All told, it was pleasant. Marco's parents were nice, I had the chance to get out of my house after spending the day dealing with Eren's psychotic episode, and the more we talked, the more he smiled, feeding into a weird sense of accomplishment that I really had no reason to possess.

I couldn't stay for a movie or evening meditation (what?) unfortunately, as Thomas texted me during dinner to inform me that he'd dropped my homework off at the house. That all needed to be done, on top of me finishing the cleanup of my room so I didn't end up stepping on any errant trophy shards in the future, and it needed to be done soon if I had any hope of getting more than an hour of sleep before I had to go to school the next day.

"_Namaste,_ honey, don't be a stranger!" Karma shouted after us as we headed for the garage, apparently thinking we were out of earshot when she squeaked out an energetic little "I like that one, he's a charming little cutie!" to Marco's dad.

I smirked.

"Don't say anything," Marco grumbled.

I smirked wider.

"Your parents are really cool," I observed as he merged onto the freeway to take me back home.

"I can't tell if you're delusional or just patronizing me," he snorted.

"No, really!" Shaking my head emphatically, I turned and watched the passing streetlights strobe across his face, pretended not to notice the faint pink wash splashed across his cheekbones. "I dig the whole beatnik thing, although I have to say I was disappointed that your alleged Belgian hippie parents don't have accents."

"My great-grandparents were from Belgium. The furthest Mom and Dad have traveled is to Nevada to go to Burning Man every summer."

"I still feel deceived," I laughed as he pulled into my driveway, rifling around in my backpack until I found the copy of _The Infinity Vault_. "Here, I believe this was the entire reason we met up today."

Marco shook his head. "Keep it. I've got three copies. But I… Dammit, I forgot _Lullaby _at the house!"

"Guess we'll just have to meet up for you to return it some other time," I shrugged, a crooked grin stretching across my face as I got slowly out of the minivan and stood on the cracked pavement of my driveway looking at him. "So you said that Levi Rivaille never answered any of your letters?"

"No, never. I must have sent him at least twenty."

"I told you, he's an unethical prick."

"An unethical prick who happens to be my favorite author; watch yourself," Marco said airily, rolling the window down after I shut the car door and shifting into reverse. "I'm really sorry about forgetting your book. Call me?"

"Absolutely," I nodded.

I stood at the end of my driveway and watched until his taillights disappeared around the corner before I turned and went back inside, only then realizing that my leg was still aching to the point that my gait was stilted and uneven. Mom fussed as soon as I walked in, demanding to know what was wrong with Eren before pushing into the fluffier topics, if I'd had fun with my friend and how was I feeling and I looked tired, sweetie, I should probably go to bed.

"Eren got dumped, I had a lot of fun, I think my liner's wearing out, and I'll go to bed as soon as I'm done with homework," I answered in quick succession, kissing her on the cheek and wincing my way down to my room. I could and should have started the pile of homework sitting on my bed, but instead, I grabbed for my laptop, waiting for it to warm up and pulling up a search engine.

"_People don't just disappear, Landon,"_ Priscilla Romano had said about halfway through _The Infinity Vault _as she and her fiancé tried to hunt down the man who had formulated the supposedly unbreakable algorithm. _"They run, they hide, but there are always breadcrumbs. Humans aren't equations. They're uncertain and fallible and proud, and there will always be something left behind to lead to them."_

I hoped that was true as I cracked my knuckles and typed 'Levi Rivaille' into the search bar and hit the Enter key.

Authors had a duty to their readers, and I had brownie points to earn.


	5. Chapter 5

I didn't call Marco the next day. Or the day after that. Or the day after that.

My life had launched into somewhat of a flurry after the Broken Trophy Incident, my time split very unevenly between the pre-finals onslaught of homework, minimal amounts of sleep, and being Eren's lifeline. The clock was ticking down to Surgery Day, and with spending time with Mikasa now out of the question, he elected instead to cling to me like a very weepy barnacle, sulking in my room from the time school let out until his mom came to pick him up every night. He had a right to be upset, of course. I of all people knew what it was like to have a piece of you ripped away because of what an abominable bitch cancer could be, but even I hadn't lost one of my senses. I didn't pretend to understand how that must have felt, and some part of me knew that Eren was grateful for that. What he needed wasn't someone to reassure him or lie that everything would be okay. He needed to burst into sporadic blackouts of rage, start crying in the middle of his daily activities, eat his weight in pizza rolls, and finish playing Dragon Age: Origins. Who was I to deny him?

In what little spare time I had, my internet safari to hunt down Levi Rivaille consumed me. I sent a strongly-worded letter about ethics and being a literary cocktease care of his publisher, as Marco had done so many times before, but I knew better than to hope for results by going down that road. I combed through hundreds of internet search results, sifted through every source on his woefully lacking Wikipedia page (not even so much as a picture) to the same disappointing results: he was a native of Rochester, New York, graduated from NYU with an English degree, came out of nowhere with _The Infinity Vault, _and then moved to Paris soon after it was published. Gone. No trace. No forwarding address. And not so much as a short story published in four years.

I was hunched over my laptop in the cafeteria on the verge of pulling my hair out when my salvation came in the form of a scrawny Mathlete with a stuttering problem.

Eren had been friends with Armin Arlert since infancy by virtue of them being next door neighbors, and so I had gotten acquainted with him after becoming friends with Eren. Armin was a shy kid, never talked much because he had a debilitating stutter, but he was as nice as a person could possibly be, the kind of earnest kindness you'd expect from someone with a closet full of argyle sweater vests and a tragic blonde coconut hairstyle. He was one of those dorky kids who took a quiet pride in their dorkiness. I liked him. However, I never expected him to lean over my shoulder as I looked despairingly at my computer screen and solve all my problems in two minutes flat. "D-d-did you t-try searching for support st-st-staff?"

"What?" I asked, gnawing defeatedly on a chicken nugget and half-ready to throw my laptop out the nearest window.

"I m-mean, he's a famous author. Even if he d-d-didn't want t-to be found, p-p-pe... dammit... _people _like that always have a p-personal assistant or something." After wringing his hands for a moment, Armin reached over and pulled the laptop down towards him, going back up to the search bar on top of the page and adding 'assistant' to the end of my original 'Levi Rivaille' query. Sure enough, an entirely different page of results popped up. Cautiously optimistic, I reached over Armin's hand and clicked on the first result.

The link led to the personal blog of one Hange Zoë, a German native who had moved to France to go to grad school for Literature at Sorbonne University. Apparently, Ms. Zoë had aspirations of going into the publishing business after her schooling was complete, and in the meantime was working as the personal assistant of the one and only Levi Rivaille. Breath catching in my throat, I scrolled further down, sifting through posts and external links until I found it, sitting like a holy relic in the bottom left hand corner of the page. A 'contact me' button.

Letting out a victorious whoop that earned me a glare from the teachers prowling the empty spaces between lunch tables, I bookmarked the page and looked up at Eren excitedly over the top of the screen. "I've got him. I've fucking got him."

"Huh? What, your author guy?" Eren hummed disinterestedly, still stuck in a morose rut. "Dude, you've been obsessing over that shit for days; it's weird. Pretty sure that if you want to get into Support Group Marco's pants all you have to do is ask, not go on some big Spirit Quest for Ravioli What's-his-name."

"He's got an assistant. This Zoë chick, she's a grad student and she works for him. I bet if I email her, she can make sure he sees it," I pressed on, not bothering to confirm or deny that Marco's pants had anything to do with my motivations. It might have started out as a mission to make myself look like some sort of international super-sleuth, sure, but somewhere along the line my case had become more personal. I was _invested,_ and the victory I felt sitting there looking at Hange Zoë's blog was entirely my own. Besides, the journey wasn't over yet. A step forward wasn't an ending, and I had no intention of telling Marco about the fact that I was trying to find Levi Rivaille until I had results to show him.

Eren looked at me like I was insane. I probably was.

"M-make sure you word it p-p-profession… professionally so you c-come off as an interested p-party," Armin added in, letting me snatch my laptop back.

"Of course, of course," I nodded hurriedly, putting the computer on sleep mode to save battery power and grinning derangedly. "A proper, businesslike email with some heartstring-pulling… she'll have to make sure he sees it. Armin, I could _kiss_ you."

His pasty complexion went cherry-red, fingers drumming uncertainly on top of the table. "As rakishly handsome as you are, J-Jean, you're n-n-not exactly my t-type."

"Duly noted, and thank you for the compliment," I laughed, sending a quick text to Marco under the table. No specifics yet, but it had been two days since we'd spoken and it wouldn't do for him to think that I wasn't interested, or worse, forget about me entirely.

He didn't text back until lunch was over and I had taken up my spot next to Eren in the back of our English class, cursing when my phone buzzed in my pocket and trying to hide it stealthily in my lap as Marco and I had a short exchange:

_Me: So I may or may not have a surprise for you in the near future._

_Marco: Sorry, I was in my Astronomy lecture. What kind of surprise?_

_Me: Astronomy and Russian Lit? What the hell are you majoring in?_

_Marco: Undecided Major. I take classes that interest me. What kind of surprise?!_

_Me: :)_

_Marco: You are mean and I am patient. Let the games begin._

"Kirschtein! You're doing one of two things under that desk, neither of which are appropriate for a classroom!"

"Sorry, Mrs. Brzenska," I said with a winning smile, slipping my phone back into my pocket. It was best that I not give anything else away to Marco, keep him on his toes. I might have said too much already. Smirking to myself, I went back to filling out my chapter analysis, eyes flicking periodically up towards the clock. There were approximately five hundred and thirty-two things that were more important to me than understanding the symbolism of the color yellow in _The Great Gatsby,_ and the chief among them was tucked away in the bookmarks section of my internet browser, its potential just waiting to be unlocked.

I was so excited to get out of school after the final bell rang that I was sitting in a line of cars to get out of the parking lot when a very angry Eren Jaeger came out of nowhere, sliding Dukes of Hazzard-style across the hood of my Camry with both middle fingers in the air. I slammed on the brake, cursing loudly. I'd forgotten that I was driving him to my house to spend yet another evening playing Dragon Age and drowning in his growing sense of helplessness. When he got in the car, I punched his upper arm hard enough to bruise. "You want to be blind _and_ crippled, dumbass?!"

"That's a lot of concern coming from someone who almost abandoned me!" he sniped in reply, yanking his seat belt across his chest in a violent motion. "Bastard."

"If you dented my car you won't have to worry about being abandoned because you'll be fucking _dead._"

"Ooh, whatcha gonna do, Kirschtein, bludgeon me with your prosthetic?"

"No, but I _am_ going to go kick you out of my passenger's seat at your house," I grumbled, lurching out of the parking lot and glaring angrily over at Eren. "I've got better things to do with my life than endure you being a moody little dickmunch."

Eren was suddenly much nicer. "Come on, man, I'm like three quests away from the end of Dragon Age! I wanna fight the Archdemon!"

"Should have thought about that before you climbed on my car like a heathen," I shrugged, turning towards Eren's house instead of mine.

"Jeaaaaaaaan."

"No! Fuck you!"

"JEAAAAAAAAAAAN."

Fifteen minutes later, Eren was nestled happily in one of my gaming chairs with an Xbox controller and a plate of enough pizza rolls to give Jabba the Hutt diarrhea. I was curled into the seat beside him, my laptop perched precariously on my prosthetic knee with a blank email to Hange Zoë on the screen, cursor blinking expectantly. For some reason, it felt almost foreboding, that little line of pixels, and not just because the entirety of my romantic future was riding on the words it would produce.

"What should I even say?" I wondered out loud.

"Dude, I don't fucking care, I'm just trying to kill this Loghain guy and make Alistair king," Eren mumbled distractedly. There would be no help from him. I sighed, tried to remember the lesson we'd had in English on writing a business letter, and cracked my knuckles.

_Ms. Zoë:_

_I sincerely hope that you don't mind the admittedly high creep factor of me tracking you down on the internet, but I feel that the trope "desperate times call for desperate measures" is applicable to my situation. You see, a friend of mine has been trying for quite some time to get ahold of your employer with questions regarding his novel, and admittedly I have a few questions of my own. Since all attempts by either of us to contact Mr. Rivaille via his publisher have failed, it became necessary to go for a more direct route. If you could please pass the following letter and my contact information along to him, it would be very much appreciated. Thank you for your time._

_Sincerely,_

_Jean Kirschtein_

_1511 Rose Ave_

_Trost, IL 60510_

I leaned back and looked at the email, reading it over a few times before I decided it sounded professional enough. Of course, my sense of professionalism was a little subjective, given that I was sitting next to a seventeen year old cancer patient who was currently throwing pizza rolls at my TV screen and calling a pixelated fictional character a traitorous douchewagon. It would work, or at least it had a better hope of working than anything else so far.

"Die, fucker!" Eren shouted, flinging another pizza roll and attacking his X button.

"You're getting grease on my TV screen," I observed flatly.

"Fuck your TV screen, I'm saving Ferelden from a despotic ruler!"

Two days until the surgery, I reminded myself, be nice. Rolling my eyes, I went back to the email and started on the _really_ important part.

_Dear Mr. Rivaille,_

_I apologize for having to resort to contacting you through your assistant Ms. Zoë, but given that all other ventures to get in touch with you end in silence, hopefully this one will not. I recently read your novel _The Infinity Vault,_ and at the risk of sounding cliché, it struck a chord with me. As a cancer survivor, I really connected with Priscilla and became very invested in her story. She's a wonderful character, a real hero in a genre if not a literary industry entirely that profoundly lacks them._

_However, the majority of this email is not for my own sake. I am actually writing on behalf of my friend Marco Bodt, who introduced me to your novel in the first place. Like me, Marco knows what it's like to live with cancer, mostly because he's still living with it after a four-year fight. He's written to you via your publisher several times with some questions about the end (or lack thereof) of _The Infinity Vault_ and never received an answer. _

_Allow me to digress for a moment. While I personally understand that the story ended the way it did because Priscilla died, I believe that the lack of an epilogue violates a very sacred pact between author and reader. People go into stories with the promise of closure implied, and the abrupt cut-off of _The Infinity Vault _utterly shatters that promise. In the name of the sanity of thousands of readers, you might want to consider publishing an epilogue instead of hiding in Paris and not touching the piles of angry letters no doubt sitting in your publisher's office._

_Back to the subject of Marco, however, it should be noted that I have a rather desperate crush on him, and the answers to his questions about _The Infinity Vault, _many of which are also my questions, would be my proverbial golden ticket. I don't know how much bad karma you racked up by writing a book without an ending, Mr. Rivaille, but no doubt helping two cancer patients along the road to sickeningly sweet teenage romance would help to dissipate a little of it. That said, I'll move on to the actual questions._

_Was the cure actually real, or was it an elaborate hoax? If the cure wasn't real, what was in the vault? Was Priscilla's fiancé Landon working for the government the whole time? And most importantly, at least in Marco's opinion, what became of Priscilla's beloved Corgi Archie after she died?_

_In my precursory email to Ms. Zoë, I provided my contact information. I thank you for your time and for your stunning literary work, and hope to hear back from you soon._

_Respectfully (at any rate more respectful than someone who ends a book mid-sentence),_

_Jean Kirschtein, age 17_

I clicked the 'send' button with a smirk, listening for the satisfying little _schwoomp _sound of my email landing in Paris. Mission initiated.

"Come on, come on, come on... YES!" Eren crowed victoriously, launching out of the gaming chair and pumping a fist over his head. "That's how we do it in the Dalish tribes, bitch!"

"Oh, you beat the game, awesome." Shutting my laptop with an emphatic snap, I looked up at where Eren was button-punching through the final cutscene. "Good playthrough, man, you made some tough calls."

"I'm happy with it," he nodded, falling back into the chair as the credits began to roll. "How'd your email go?"

"We'll have to wait and see." Eren was quiet for a long time after that, staring at the names scrolling across my grease-spotted TV screen. "You okay?"

"I just... haven't figured out what I want it to be yet," he frowned, staring down at the controller in his lap. "The last thing I see. Because like _fuck_ it's going to be some doctor looming over me with an IV needle. I'm going to see my last great sight, shut my eyes, and then let them wheel me in for the surgery. I used to want it to be _her,_ but now I get what a stupid idea that was."

He'd slipped into a habit of never saying Mikasa's name. She was always _her_ or some combination of less politically-correct titles. Saying her name hurt too much, and Eren was dealing with enough impending pain already without adding to it. Hoping to lighten the situation, I reached over and hit his shoulder playfully. "Hey, if they'll let me back there, I'll come languish at your bedside and loudly ask God why it couldn't be me instead."

"Jean, you're practically my brother and I love you," Eren deadpanned, "But I do _not_ want your stupid Seabiscuit face to be the last thing to hit my retinas."

"Fair enough," I shrugged.

"It'll probably be my mom," Eren spoke up again after another stretch of silence, his voice softer than it ever was. "I don't want to forget my mom."

For once in my life, I didn't have anything to say to that.

Eren's mom was indeed the last thing he saw. I was somewhere in the range of the fourth-or-fifth-to-last thing, out of bed at four in the morning that Friday, waiting in the dewy humidity on my front porch for Mrs. Jaeger to swing by in her cute little mid-life-crisis-red Mazda to pick me up because my car was dangerously low on gas and I had another two days until my allowance rolled in. I had on jeans and a Panic! At the Disco t-shirt that I'd bought at a concert the previous summer, but as I climbed into the back seat I got the odd feeling that I should have dressed for a funeral. Eren looked almost obsessively out the window the entire way to the hospital, the piercing blue of his functional eye locked on every passing tree and storefront and piece of trash caught in a storm drain. No one said a word. It was by far the most uncomfortable fifteen minutes of my life.

Because I wasn't immediate family, I wasn't allowed in pre-op, confined to the waiting room until hospital staff informed me otherwise. Eren looked vaguely ill as he stood there in his pajama bottoms and Mass Effect hoodie, slightly panicked as I started throwing my stuff into a vacant chair in the corner and setting up camp. "Jean."

"I hope you realize that this is the definition of friendship," I muttered, plugging my phone charger into the nearest wall outlet and checking my backpack to confirm that I'd thankfully brought my 3DS with me. Nothing like Pokémon X to wile away the hours waiting to see if your best friend had died on the operating table. "These chairs look uncomfortable as hell."

"Jean."

"And you know as well as I do how much hospital food sucks."

"Jean, would you stop being a whiny pain in the ass for ten seconds and _look at me?!_" Eren's voice was thick and cracking around the edges, his real eye teary when I turned around. He wiped irritably at that side of his face before his hands settled on my shoulders, holding me in place as he stared at me. Intense, focused. Trying to memorize. We stayed like that for well over a minute until Eren gave a small nod of self-approval and lunged forward, wrapping his arms around me in a hug that bordered upon painful.

"Good luck, man," I coughed, trying to hide the thickness in my own voice. Life was more unfair than it had any fucking right to be.

Eren sniffed and slapped his hand against my back, stepping away with a nod. "I'll see you when I'm in recovery."

I sputtered out a laugh. "You clever bastard, was that a pun?"

"I've spent too much of my time around you," he shrugged, grinning crookedly over his shoulder as he followed his mom through a door held open by a nurse. "Later."

The chairs were, in fact, very uncomfortable. After thirty minutes of sitting in my mini-camp dicking around with my Pokémon game, there was a dull ache spreading up my spine like red heat over a warming coal. I got up, walked laps around the waiting room, got a dirty look from the nurse manning the desk.

"Sorry," I beamed sweetly, hiking up the leg of my jeans to show the metal-and-plastic post that disappeared into my shoe underneath. "Leg's just giving me a bit of trouble."

She looked away, cheeks reddening. I realized what a bad person I was when I felt a measurable satisfaction at that.

A few more laps. Back to the chair. Thirty more minutes of trying and failing to catch 'em all. I eventually gave up and chucked my 3DS back into my backpack, deciding to start on the homework I'd collected in advance, knowing that I'd be missing school that day. I burned through that quickly enough, got up, walked another five laps around the waiting room. The clock read 8:15 AM.

Grumbling to myself, I grabbed all my stuff and headed for the elevator. If I didn't get some caffeine soon, I was on a one-way train to being royally bitchy by the time Eren woke up. I had a total of a crumpled five-dollar bill in my pocket to accomplish this, determined not to resort to the carafe of complimentary coffee sitting in the corner of the waiting room. Hospital coffee had a bad habit of tasting like liquid asphalt, and there was a coffee shop on the campus of the community college across the street from Memorial. I could use the change of scenery, anyway.

Ten minutes later, I was walking away from a queue of haggard-looking college students, clutching a white chocolate mocha in my hands like the Holy Grail. It was an unexplainable phenomenon, what coffee could do for one's sense of optimism. The morning was shaping up nicely enough. Maybe I could go sit in the atrium at the hospital and draw, I mused, or find something to do other than deal with the empty waiting room and the nurse who kept giving me the stink-eye.

"Jean?"

The voice caught my attention when I was already halfway out the door, and I almost dropped my coffee as I turned around, noting silently that it was too early for me to be coordinated yet. I had to look around for a few seconds before I spotted him over at the station with sugar and creamer and stuff, stirring a big spoonful of honey into his tea. "Marco, hey!"

He gave me that million-watt smile and a little wave, pressing the lid back onto his cup. Marco looked far too good for eight in the morning, hair in place and gray polo shirt not wrinkled in the slightest as he walked over, oxygen tank trundling behind him with its telltale squeak. "You ditching school?"

"No. Yes. Sort of," I shrugged, squinting as I tried to put it more coherently and taking small, piping sips of my coffee. "Eren's in surgery across the street."

Marco's eyes widened. "Oh God, that _was_ today, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, he was pissed that they couldn't get him on the schedule after school was out. He'll probably get held back another year now," I nodded, having to physically bite back a tidal wave of words about Hange Zoë and her blog and how I may or may not have accomplished the impossible. Too soon, and hardly the time to discuss it.

"D'you mind of I come back over with you?" he asked, walking with me out the door and snagging one of the wrought-iron tables out on the patio. "I only had one class today, and it got cancelled after I left my house, I guess, so I might as well stop in while I'm here."

"Sure. I could use the company at any rate," I smirked, setting my coffee down and digging around in my jeans pocket for my pack of cigarettes. "The waiting room nurse doesn't like me very much."

"Did you not-smoke in the waiting room?"

"No, I think she has something against amputees playing Pokémon at full volume in her sanctum of healing."

Marco laughed, raking a hand through his hair. "You are an unbelievable dork."

"You love it," I grinned, checking my phone for the time. "But hey, Eren's going to be out of surgery in like half an hour, so we'd probably better head back over."

The hand that wasn't holding his tea came up and rubbed across the side of his face. "I feel so bad. I completely forgot it was today so I didn't get him anything. Do you think he'd want a card - wait, no, he wouldn't be able to..."

Leaving the thought to trail off, he snapped his fingers and clambered to his feet, tugging his tank over to a planter box by the sidewalk and carefully picking a handful of blue flowers from the soil.

"Yeah, those are pretty, but he won't be able to see them eith- oof!" I started, but before I could finish Marco had shoved the flowers in my face, knocking the Marlboro between my lips to the ground and smirking as I got a nose full of their strong, sweet fragrance and nodded my understanding.

"Hyacinths. My mom grows them in our planters because they make the house smell good," he explained, dumping the rest of his tea out and refilling the cup from the water bottle lashed onto his backpack before arranging the stolen hyacinths in it like a makeshift vase.

"After meeting your mom, I have a feeling that that's not the only thing she grows in your planters," I snickered, getting up and shouldering my backpack to follow Marco across the street.

"Remind me to never tell you about the brownie incident at my seventh birthday that is the reason I've never had a party since," he said gravely. We were still laughing when the elevator let us off at the surgery waiting room, and the glare the desk nurse gave us only made us laugh harder.

Time went faster with Marco there. We sat back in the corner I'd claimed upon arriving at the hospital and talked about what we'd been up to, how he had finals the next week and I'd be finishing mine up soon after. im a few of my _Infinity Vault _sketches and maybe sort of blushed a little when he fawned over them, able to ignore the pain in my back that was rapidly spreading to my leg from the stupid, uncomfortable chair. He was saying something about how my rendering of Priscilla was almost exactly like he'd imagined her when the same nurse that had led Eren back for surgery poked her head out the door, catching my eye and smiling. "He's in recovery now, sweetie, we can let back two visitors at a time."

I felt strangely sick as I got to my feet, a leaden weight settling in my stomach. In the entire four years I'd known him, I hadn't ever seen Eren weak. Raw and hurt and angry, absolutely, but something about the idea of seeing him wasted and helpless and _blind _in a hospital bed set my teeth on edge. Marco seemed to pick up on it as we walked down the hallway, wrapped an arm around my shoulder and gave me a little squeeze. It helped more than it should have.

It also helped that Eren had his bed in the upright position when we walked in, bandages wrapped around the top of his head so that he looked like an unfinished mummy. He frowned when he heard the footsteps, head turning towards the door. "Mom?"

"Hi, honey," I said, walking over and sitting on the edge of his bed.

"Fuck you, Kirschtein."

"Maybe as a get-well present once you're cleared for physical activity." Laughing, I reached up and patted his shoulder. He jumped at the contact and I realized too-late that he wasn't exactly able to see it coming. All of the levity dropped from the situation. "I ran into Marco across the street. He wanted to come say hi."

"I brought flowers to help get rid of the hospital smell," Marco chimed in, setting the coffee cup of hyacinths on the rolling tray next to Eren's bed and smiling softly. I reminded myself that now was not the time to be thinking that he was beautiful.

"Ah, Support Group Marco. Come to me," Eren said sagely, making a beckoning gesture. Marco looked a little confused but took a step closer to the bed anyway, reaching down and tapping Eren's arm to let him know where he was. At that, Eren reached up with both arms, his hands gluing themselves to the sides of Marco's face. "Yes, yes, I _see. _You have endured much suffering, my child, most of it going by the name of Jean Kirschtein."

"What kind of drugs have they got you on?" I cackled, laughing so hard that I had to grab the railing on the side of the bed to keep from falling off.

"The _best _kind," Eren grinned, but all the swelling in his face made the expression look a little weird. Marco was laughing as well by the time Eren let go of his face, wheeling his oxygen tank out over so he could sit on the other side of the bed.

"If you want help with doing your school stuff so they don't hold you back, I can come over after class during the week and do your writing and stuff for you," he offered, pulling the plastic tubes back into place across his cheekbones where Eren had knocked them off balance. My phone dinged, and I swiped past the lock screen to check on my new email.

"That's a nicer offer than my classmate and supposed best friend made me, but I'm going to rehab in a week to learn how to to Blind Guy Things," Eren shrugged, trying to hit me in reference but missing me entirely. "Dammit, Jean, help me out here."

"You're fucking kidding me," I whispered.

"It's not that outlandish of a request. Just get up here so I can smack you."

"You're _fucking_ kidding me."

Marco frowned, looking concerned as he got up and walked around the end of the bed. "Is something wrong?"

I shook my head slowly, looking up at him with a slowly growing smile. "You know how you said that you never heard back from Levi Rivaille after you sent all those letters?"

He raised an eyebrow, pulling his tank to a stop beside him. "Yeah, but this hardly seems like the time to-"

_"Dear Mr. Kirschtein,"_ I cut him off, reading from my phone screen with my grin stretching wider by the second. _"I am responding to you via Ms. Zoë's email rather than bothering with the cumbersome and frankly expensive practice of international snail mail. While I have always found email to be impersonal and unnecessary (hence why I do not have one that I use personally), I find myself sadly unable to locate any stamps at the current time."_

"No way," Marco whispered.

I took a breath and continued. _"I am sure that your friend appreciates your valiant effort to contact someone who displays a very profound desire to not be contacted - although what degree of appreciation is up to Fate and not myself. Godspeed, my friend."_

"No _way._"

_"However, I got my own share of personal enjoyment from reading your thoughts and questions, and while your message was very eloquent, if also very snarky, I am sadly unable to answer yours or Mr. Bodt's questions in this format. Another unfortunate side-effect of email is that it is connected to the internet, upon which would spring God-knows-how-many blog posts and whatnot detailing carefully-guarded secrets about the end of _The Infinity Vault _should I divulge them here. If you or your friend ever find yourselves in Paris, however, I would be happy to sit down and have a discussion about these burning inquiries with you. I wish you the best of luck with your endeavors, Mr. Kirschtein, and wish Mr. Bodt the best of luck with his recovery. _

_Cordially,_

_Levi Rivaille_

_P. S. Which is more sacred, the unspoken vow between an author and his readers, or the one between an author and the integrity of his work? I have been thinking on this for the last few days, and believe it would be an interesting debate."_

Marco gaped at me for several seconds, mouth working soundlessly. I smirked and hopped off the bed, bowing with a flourish.

"You found him," he said numbly.

"I did," I nodded, flipping my phone around so he could see the email. "Not quite the result I wanted, but I found him. What do you think?"

Rather than respond, Marco just clapped both hands over his mouth and let out what was decidedly the most adorable little giggle I'd ever heard in my life, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet for a few seconds and looking at me with wide, kid-on-Christmas-morning eyes. "You _found him._"

"Yeah, he's even kind of a dick over email."

Another laugh, and before I could process what was happening, there were warm hands settled on both sides of my jaw, Marco's smile making the drab hospital room shades brighter. He was a walking hyacinth, masking the death and decay of the sterile linoleum and hideously patterned walls until all I could process was him and the angle of his mouth and every nuance of what his hands felt like against my skin. "Jean Kirschtein, I could _kiss _you right now."

"You could," I grinned crookedly, stepping closer to him. He was a bit taller than me, to the point I had to tilt my head back to hold his gaze at that proximity. Marco's cheeks went a florid red at that, a stammered cover about how figurative language had a purpose catching along the edges of his lips, but I noticed that he didn't move his hands from where they were, his face hovering a fraction of an inch closer to mine.

"You know, I would appreciate it if you two would stop pretending that I'm not here just because I can't see you," Eren groused at us from the bed, and we both dissolved into laughter before anything else could happen.

He grabbed my hand as we walked back over to sit with Eren, though, and I held on to that fact like a drowning man clings to a life-preserver.


	6. Chapter 6

A week after I got my email back from Levi Rivaille, Eren left his hospital bed in Memorial behind in favor of going to some facility in Wisconsin that would spend a month teaching him how to do Blind Guy Things. His absence left my calendar so empty that there was probably a proverbial tumbleweed blowing forlornly across my abandoned social life, although I didn't really notice it until finals were over and summer had started and I was sitting in my room, alone, doing my own playthrough of Mass Effect 3. Armin had dropped by a few times since school let out, but he'd left with his family for the beach two days ago. The Reapers were attacking my ship, I was out of ammo, and my eyes were starting to hurt from staring at the screen for eight consecutive hours. I tried to think of the last time I'd left my room.

My phone was sitting right beside me.

"No, I'll sound desperate," I shook my head, going back to the battle.

Right there. So close. "Gotta play it cool."

Sitting in a dark basement at nine-thirty at night, losing spectacularly at a nerdy video game, talking to myself and eating half my weight in taquitos. Very cool. I sighed and grabbed my phone, desperation be damned.

Marco picked up on the second ring. "Please tell me you're incredibly bored and want to do something."

"You know me too well," I sighed, saving my game and slumping back in my chair. Marco and I had hung out a few times since Eren's departure, but the encounters had been small, fleeting, a trip to the coffee shop on the community college campus again, a quick run to the bookstore so I could help him pick out his next Palahniuk book. Like most school-aged cancer patients, Marco had a tidal wave of doctor's appointments that crashed down on his head the second he was out of school for the summer, some of them as far away as Chicago, and when he wasn't running back and forth to his appointments he was exhausted _from_ running back and forth to his appointments. In the past week, I'd been lucky to get a few texts a day out of him. But he sounded awake enough now, which gave me a little bit of hope. "Why, are you free? No appointments tomorrow?"

"No appointments for the next three weeks," he replied victoriously. I could hear crickets in the background. He was outside. "You should come over; it's beautiful out here tonight."

I hummed contemplatively. "I haven't been outside in three days. Don't want to break my streak."

"Jean!"

"What, I'm not allowed to be a hermit?"

"Hermits live off the land, bozo, not processed frozen food," Marco laughed, the sound of it ending in a raspy cough. "Come over. I miss you."

Those last three words lit me up from the inside until I could have sworn that my skin started to glow. Grinning stupidly and holding my phone between my ear and my shoulder, I got up out of my gaming chair and started hunting around for my prosthetic, which had somehow ended up under my bed. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. You only like me because I stalked your favorite author on the internet."

"You have good taste in books, too," Marco chimed in. I could hear the smile in his voice. "I have a present for you."

"Oh God, tell me you didn't bring me back a tacky souvenir t-shirt from Chicago."

"No. It's a homemade gift."

"Your mom's pot brownies?"

"Get off the phone and get over here!" he cackled, hanging up on me.

I smiled all the way to his house.

There was a little gate beside the Bodts' garage that led to their fenced-in back yard, and since it was late, I decided to go that way rather than knocking on the front door. Marco had mentioned that his mom was an avid gardener before, but I hadn't quite realized the extent of it until I was walking along a carefully-kept walkway lined with dozens of different flowers I couldn't name, beautiful and very obviously loved. The only ones I could identify were the blue hyacinths in the planter boxes hanging from the windows, the same flowers that Marco had stolen from the coffee shop's flower bed for Eren. I reached over contemplatively, plucked a single bloom from the soil. There were so many that I was sure Marco's mom wouldn't miss one.

The back porch light wasn't on, leaving the yard fairly dark. Marco was stretched out on his back on the slight slope that led from the porch down to a koi pond by the back fence, and I would have probably tripped over him if it hadn't been for the silhouette of his oxygen tank standing upright beside him.

"So what's this about a present?" I asked, and he jumped a little, startled. I couldn't see very well in the ambient suburban glow and moonlight, but I thought he looked a little paler than usual, wheezing with effort by the time he sat up.

"A simple 'hello' would have been nice," he rolled his eyes, reaching down beside him and bringing forth an empty mason jar with a small slot carved into the lid, decorated with resin gems and other craft supplies that looked like they had fallen out of a kindergarten classroom. "Family Craft Night. I'd made enough macramé jewelry to last me a lifetime, figured I'd do something especially for you. I get to keep it, though. It's more of a new system than a material gift."

"I'm touched," I smirked, sitting down beside him and messing with my leg until I was at least somewhat comfortable. The pain had gotten to the point of almost being chronic whenever I had my prosthetic on. I'd never had a liner wear out so quickly before, but I had an appointment with my prosthetist in two weeks' time to get the situation checked out. Besides, it was easy to ignore, sitting in the grass beside Marco, the air of the yard fragrant with his mother's flowers and his close proximity to me going anything but unnoticed. Settling in, I grabbed a cigarette from the pack in my pocket and held it between my teeth, tilting my head. "So explain this new system."

"It's a Metaphor Jar," he said.

"A Metaphor Jar?" I asked.

"A Metaphor Jar," he nodded, waving the empty jar in my direction. "A customized version of what is commonly referred to as a Douchebag Jar. Every time you unnecessarily draw metaphorical or otherwise existential implications from mundane activities, you have to put a dollar in the jar. The loss of your money acts as negative reinforcement to keep you from being such a pretentious asshole all the time."

I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and drew from it a crisp fifty dollar bill, pretending that I had an overabundance of money when the truth was that my Gran had a fondness of slipping me cash every time I visited. "This should cover about one hour of me in my usual state," I grinned, leaning over and stopping with the bill just short of the jar's mouth. "But Marco, you have to swear to me that the proceeds of this jar aren't going to a cancer charity. That would make you pretentious in an entirely different way, not to mention that it's lazy, horrible irony."

He blinked. "Actually, I was going to make it ironic by using the money to take you out to dinner sometime."

"I knew there was a reason I liked you." I slipped the money into the jar with a flourish. "Can we go to Olive Garden?"

"Sure," Marco laughed, setting the embellished container carefully between us. "You're buying, after all."

"Eren says hi, by the way." A redirection of the subject brought on by me looking down to the the hyacinth held carefully between my fingers, its sweet, heavy scent settling over my consciousness.

"Oh, I know. He Skypes me, too."

I blinked. "He does?"

Since Eren was obviously no longer capable of texting in the traditional sense, the easiest way for the two of us to communicate was Skype. It allowed him to practice with whatever Blind Guy OS was running on his computer now, and allowed me, at least, to see how he was doing. He'd graduated from the god-awful mummy bandages to an admittedly pretty stylish pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, and the swelling in his face had gone down to the point that it looked normal. It was almost possible to pretend that the person on the other side of the webcam was Eren in his prime, if not for the few times when his brand-new cane or the piles of Braille books on his desk slipped into view. Still, it was good to get the chance to talk to him, see how he was doing. Perhaps it was selfish of me to assume that Marco wasn't doing the same, but it still surprised me a little.

"Yeah, I just talked to him today, actually," Marco nodded, coughing a bit and laying back down, staring up at the incredibly clear sky. "He seems like he's doing better, and not just physically. He was so sad, even before the surgery, you know? He's getting a little of the fire back now."

"And what about you?" I blurted out, cursing my mouth and cursing it more when it didn't stop. "The doctor's appointments, I mean. Are you doing any better, or-"

"Indefinitely terminal. Same as ever." His lips were thin and pressed when he spoke, cutting me off in a way that wasn't unkind but still showed that he didn't want to talk about it. "No new growth, but no shrinkage, and I'm still apparently in no state for them to try another round of chemo, which is fine by me. It never worked before, anyway, and I don't like the idea of feeling like absolute death without the promise of progress."

"Oh," I said flatly, not knowing how else to respond. "Well, I guess that's better than-"

"Why do you care, Jean? I thought you didn't like focusing on prison tattoos."

And there, right in the undertones of his voice was a little bit of unkindness. I'd never heard Marco sound so hard, so clipped, and although my adjusting visibility still wasn't the best, there was no softness in his face either, the oxygen lines cutting across his cheeks like smears of war paint, eyes dark and impassive as they reflected the emerging stars overhead. He was very pointedly not looking at me. Usually, I was aware of the extent of my assholery, always knew exactly what it was about me that pissed people off, but this time I had no idea what I'd done other than ask a simple question born of genuine concern.

"I was under the impression it went without saying that I care because I care about _you,_" I replied, taking the cigarette out of my mouth and balancing it between my fingers as though it were actually lit, a frown pulling at the corners of my lips. "And I… well… you just don't look like you feel well."

"I have _cancer,_ Jean. I never feel well." Marco spit the word _cancer_ like a profanity. I could hear the rattle of his lungs the next time he inhaled. I tried for all I was worth to look like I didn't notice it. We were both silent for a few moments after that, and Marco finally deflated with a raspy sigh, carding a hand through his hair. "I'm sorry. It's just been a long few days with all the travelling, and I've got a killer headache. I didn't mean to snap at you, but can we… Can we just talk about something else?"

Nodding slowly, I stretched out on the grass beside him, popping the cigarette back between my lips. I let him lead the conversation this time, his hand raising to point at different stars hanging over our heads as he rattled off facts he'd learned in his Astronomy class this semester. I'd known from the day I met him that he was wickedly smart, but what caught my interest more than all the equations and scientific laws was what he could recite about the softer side of the stars. Marco knew more about constellations and the stories behind them than anyone I'd ever met, and I didn't have to feign my attention as he pointed out different ones and launched into long narratives about them. Cassiopeia, the vain queen who'd been doomed to an eternity upside-down in the night sky. Orion the hunter, who could match even the goddess of the hunt herself with a bow. The Pleiades, seven sisters who had been so lovely that the gods immortalized their beauty in the stars. It seemed like every little pinprick of light up there had a story to go with it, and as Marco rattled off some obscure fact about how Orion's right shoulder is actually one of the largest stars known to man, I started mentally tracing little pictures between the smattering of freckles across his cheeks, drawing constellations of my own and wondering what sort of stories I could make up for them.

All of the talking was hard on him, though, and he fell into a wheezing silence after a while, leaving the task of continuing the conversation to me. I fumbled for a moment, trying to remember something from my past few days other than video games and food. "I've been emailing back and forth with Hange Zoë. She's an interesting character, that one."

"Is she?" Marco said cordially, obviously trying to sound like he wasn't struggling for air even as he fiddled with the settings on his tank to increase his oxygen intake.

"She's been obsessively asking when you're coming to Paris. She wants to give you a personal tour of the city. Apparently you'll love the Sorbonne campus. It's a literature nerd's wet dream."

He laughed, a little sadly. "As if I could afford a trip to Paris."

Frowning confusedly, I rolled over on my side to look at him. "Don't you have a Wish, though? My God, I've seen them hand those things out to kids with leukemia that's gone in a month, you _have_ to have gotten a Wish."

The St. Rose Foundation, the same philanthropic medical group that funded the private hospital where Marco went, did this thing where they'd give kids with cancer One Great Wish. Meeting famous athletes, cameo roles on their favorite TV show, getting front row at a concert and spending a day with their favorite band, that sort of thing. A plane ticket to Paris would be nothing compared to some of the stuff they'd pulled in the past; Marco's pessimism made no sense.

Until it did.

"I, uh… I used my Wish already," he mumbled, looking pointedly at the sky and not at me. "Three years ago."

"What did you do?" I asked. Marco remained silent, but even in the dark I could see him blush. My jaw dropped, the cigarette falling to the ground. "Oh my _God,_ you didn't."

"I was fourteen and fairly certain I was going to die!" Marco protested, going an even brighter red.

"So you went to _Disney World?!_"

"It was actually the Wizarding World of Harry Potter," he offered lamely.

"A _theme park,_ Marco!"

"I got Emma Watson's autograph, though!"

I shook my head disbelievingly, picking my cigarette up again. "And the fact remains that you threw away Paris and Levi Rivaille for a theme park."

"Well maybe I did," he said testily, crossing his arms, "But the fact remains that what's happened has happened and I no longer have a Wish."

I was quiet for a long, long time, well over five minutes and past the point that we had both reclined on the grass again before I softly said, "It's a good thing I still have mine, then."

Marco's head whipped to the side so fast I could almost hear his neck crack. "What?"

"Oh yes, I still have my Wish," I said airily, sitting up and plucking the cigarette from my lips, waving it around between my fingers as I continued. "I was never certain of what I wanted my One Great Wish to be, so I sat on that pinch of pixie dust like a mother hen with her last, most precious egg, waiting for it to hatch into a cheeping little miracle of potential."

"Put a dollar in the jar," Marco said.

"I paid in advance!"

"That stupid cigarette is a fifty dollar offense in itself. Pay up."

Grumbling, I dug my wallet out and tossed a crumpled one dollar bill in the Metaphor Jar before continuing. "At any rate, my Wish expires when I turn eighteen next March, and there is nothing more I'd like to do in that time than go to Paris, kick down Levi Rivaille's door, and demand some answers from that unethical bastard."

"You're not spending your Wish on me," he sputtered, shaking his head. "I'm not letting you spend your Wish on me."

"You misunderstand me, Marco," I laughed, raising a hand and tracing the line of Orion's belt with my fingertip. "I want to find out the end of that damned book more than I want anything else I'm going to come across in the next nine months. I'm spending my Wish on me. I'm also taking you along for the ride."

A slow, incredibly beautiful smile stretched across his face. "You're going to use your Wish to go to Paris and meet Levi Rivaille."

"Yup."

"And you're going to take me with you."

"That's the plan."

His hand came up and pressed over his mouth, muffling the giddy laughter that still managed to leak out. "Oh my God. Oh my _God,_ Jean, I… I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do."

I smirked. "Well, you _did_ mention your inclination to kiss me a few weeks ago at the hospital."

And just like that, every ounce of brightness drained from the situation. In that moment, watching the smile die on Marco's face, it felt like even the starlight had dimmed, darkening the sky in time with the look on his face as he fixed his eyes on the ground, voice tight when he spoke. "I shouldn't have said that."

My stomach sank all the way to my shoes. But to my credit, I at least tried to cover it well, clearing my throat and nodding. "Okay. I can accept that. Do you have any reasoning behind that statement?"

"I just…" he exhaled shakily, sitting up and rubbing a hand down the side of his face. "I don't want to hurt you."

"There's no one else I'd rather be hurt by," I said, and there was no sarcasm in that, no twist of wit. Just strangely raw honesty.

"God, Jean, you don't _get_ it!" Marco snapped, slamming his hand down into the grass so hard the that Metaphor Jar tipped over, rolled down the hill and sank with a wet plop into the koi pond. "You don't get it because you've always had a chance. You've always had remission. I've _never _been anything but terminal, and I…" he trailed off again, his breaths raspy and ragged. "How much do you know about astronomy?"

"Not very much," I answered truthfully, knowing that trying to be smarter than I was could make the situation far worse.

"Do you know what happens when a star dies?" Marco asked. I shook my head. It was bright enough to see that there was something wavering and liquid swimming in his eyes. "It gets bigger and bigger the older it gets, and everything around it starts being pulled to its gravitational field. And then it dies and collapses inward into a black hole, and everything around it gets sucked in and destroyed. In some other universe, in some other situation, I could be what you want, but not here. Not now. You're acting like I'm a normal person, Jean, when the truth is that I'm a fucking supernova. And one day I'm going to collapse and suck in everything around me, and I don't want to hurt you."

"Your logic is flawed," I finally said.

"You're just trying to-"

"No, you've said your piece, now let me say mine," I pressed on, holding up my hand and looking at him stubbornly. "You told me the first time I met you that Oblivion is inevitable, that it is an indisputable fact that one day we are all going to fly into the sun and everything that humankind has worked for will be for nothing. You also know a lot about space, and how massive it is, how many worlds are orbiting around how many trillions of stars. You also know that the universe is infinite, which means that somewhere out there, there are many different worlds flying into many different suns, many civilizations reduced to nothing but ash. Right now, there are a million different Oblivions happening. Life hurts you, Marco. People hurt you. It's a law of nature. That law of nature says that someday, I will inevitably be drawn into someone's supernova. I'd prefer if it was yours. If I'm going to hurt, which is implicit in the human condition, I want to at least have a choice of who gets to hurt me."

Marco looked very small, and sounded even smaller, his voice barely audible. "I don't want to have this conversation."

"Fine," I shrugged, tucking my cigarette back into its pack and pocketing the little paper carton again. "I'm still taking you to Paris."

"Fine," Marco said.

"_Fine." _We glared at each other for a moment, eventually breaking into small, grudging smiles.

"Your trip to Olive Garden is at the bottom of the koi pond," he mumbled.

"I'll get it out sometime when the sun's up so I don't grab one of the fish by mistake," I laughed, getting slowly to my feet and stretching. "At any rate, my mom will be calling to demand I come home soon; might want to head her off at the pass."

Marco walked me over to the gate, but he was panting like we'd just run a marathon by the time we got there, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. Frowning, I reached up and pressed my palm to his cheek, feverish and flushed. After our argument about black holes and multiple Oblivions, I half-expected him to pull away, but he just leaned exhaustedly into the touch, his eyes fluttering shut.

"You need to go inside and get some rest," I said, brushing my thumb across his cheekbone beneath the plastic tubing and popping the latch on the gate with my free hand. "Go take some ibuprofen for that headache. Probably wouldn't kill you to sleep in tomorrow. I'll come over and get the Metaphor Jar out of the pond and then we'll go down to the St. Rose Foundation and start our Paris plans, okay?"

Marco nodded wearily, leaning on the gate after I closed it behind me and watching as I unlocked my car. I stopped right before I climbed in the driver's seat, though, looking at him for a long time until he finally tilted his head and rasped out "What?"

"I was just thinking about how your very noble efforts to keep me at arm's length do absolutely nothing to the way I feel about you," I shrugged, tossing my keys up and catching them again. "And how all those Oblivions out there are what make up the constellations we see, and how I wonder what the story of ours will end up being."

"You owe me a dollar in the jar tomorrow," Marco said.

"I'll deposit it happily," I replied, grinning crookedly. "Goodnight, Marco."

The drive home passed in an odd skip of time, a fatigue I didn't know I had pulling down like lead in my bones as I finally rolled into my driveway. My leg throbbed as I walked inside, the pain climbing slowly up my spine as I stood in the kitchen and talked to Mom for a while before I went downstairs and got ready for bed. I ended up falling asleep on top of my covers, passed out before I even hit the pillow. A simple trip across town had taken that much out of me. Weeks of video games could really suck the life out of a person.

I woke up hours later to the muffled, shrill shriek of our home phone going off upstairs. My alarm clock read three in the morning, and I squinted against the red light of the numbers, frowning as I sat up on the edge of my bed. Grumbling something unintelligible about fucking telemarketers and time zones, I got up and hopped to the stairs, shuffling my way up, although the ringing had stopped by the time I got to the top. I could hear Mom's voice, low and muffled on the other side of the door, but I couldn't make out what she was saying. I managed to scoot out into the hallway just in time to see her put the phone back on the receiver, pulling her blue bathrobe tighter around her like she was fighting off an invisible chill, her face death-pale.

"Mom?" I asked, something making my hair stand on end. I knew that look from too many parents in waiting rooms. "Mom, what's wrong?"

"Sweetie, you need to go downstairs and get dressed," she said. She was being very calm. It terrified me. "That was Marco's mom. They just took him to the hospital. He's in ICU. It's… Jean, baby, I'm so sorry. She said it doesn't look good."

And I felt it, right there in that second, what it was like to stand in the center of a supernova.


	7. Chapter 7

I felt like I was drowning.

For a few awful, dizzying moments, it was all I could do to sit there and cycle air through my lungs, mind racing. What had been the last thing I'd said to Marco? I couldn't remember. Oh God, I couldn't _remember_, I couldn't even remember what color shirt he'd had on, if he'd smiled as I left. Marco was in Intensive Care with a bleak outlook, and the last thing I said to him could have been so stupid, so insignificant...

_Goodnight, Marco. _I'd told him goodnight and driven away. That was the last thing I was able to process before it was back to thinking about ICU and flatlines, and as I sat there in the middle of the hallway, a tidal wave of fear crashed down over my head.

As a cancer patient, you learn to deal with fear, or at least to function with it. You don't have many other options, thirteen years old and hearing for the first time that something is eating your body from the inside-out. The fear is there, visceral and dizzying, but you grit your teeth, you keep moving on through the chemo and the nausea and the pills and the amputation because your only other option is lying down and waiting for the end. From my own experience as a cancer patient, I had spent plenty of time functioning with fear.

But I hadn't been a cancer patient in over a year, and the return of that fear was so fast, so profound, that for a few moments it consumed me.

And then, thankfully, auto-pilot took over. I nodded mechanically and shuffled back downstairs, picked up my leg and the clothes I'd taken off hours earlier from the floor and put them on again. I felt like a ghost, going through an echo of what I'd done the morning of Eren's surgery, cramming my backpack with my laptop and my phone charger and my sketchbook, even a change of clothes and a bottle of shampoo from my bathroom - I knew that Memorial had courtesy showers for family members, and St. Rose was way fancier. Once I walked through those doors, I had no intention of leaving for a long time.

A few more odds and ends, and I zipped up my backpack. My breathing was disturbingly even, given the fact that I was a feather's touch away from dissolving into a sobbing heap. I blinked around at my room, snatched my copy of _The Infinity Vault_ off my desk and made for the stairs. I was halfway up when something split my body in two.

At least, that's what it felt like. The pain hit me like a locomotive, slamming into my chest hard enough to paralyze my breath. It was an unrelenting, white-hot agony that started at the seam of my prosthetic and shot all the way up my spine, into the deepest recesses of my skull. My legs went out from under me, and it was only a lucky grab at the railing that kept me from tumbling down the stairs, my back hitting the wall hard as I let out a sobbing breath.

"Jean?" Mom said from up in the hallway, her keys jingling distantly. She was getting ready to go somewhere. "What was that?"

"I'm fine," I said, putting a Herculean effort into making my voice sound normal as I got to my feet again, each step sending another knife upwards through my torso. "I dropped a book. I'm driving."

Mom frowned when I got to the top of her stairs, clutching her car keys in her floral nightgown. "Sweetie, you're upset. You can't drive like this; you're white as a sheet-"

"I'm driving!" I snapped stubbornly, snatching my keys off the rack beside our front door before she could get to them. "I'll be lucky if they let me back there at all, much less the both of us. I need to go by myself. I'll call you when I figure out what's going on."

She looked as if she was going to argue with me for a moment, but then she just sighed, kissing my cheek and petting my hair down into place. "Please be careful. I love you."

"I love you too, Mom," I choked out, limping out the front door and to my car, unsure of whether it was my leg or the leaden, apprehensive weight in my chest that was causing me the most discomfort.

I hadn't felt agony like what I'd felt on the stairs since I was thirteen.

The drive went by quickly, the roads desolate and empty at just past three in the morning. I blew through every stoplight between my house and St. Rose, the needle on my speedometer climbing higher in time with the whine of my poor Camry's overworked little four-cylinder engine. I might have burned rubber into the hospital parking lot. At that point, my head was swimming with so many fragmented thoughts that it was a wonder I even managed to park, much less care about any of that.

St. Rose looked more like a cathedral than a hospital, a towering landmark of Gothic architecture that could be seen from pretty much anywhere in the city. At night, it lit up like a beacon, a complex that never slept. And for that, I was grateful. It was a small comfort to be somewhere that was as wide-awake as I was. Inside, it was all modernized despite the classical-looking exterior, not as sterile and drab as Memorial. Classier. More streamlined. I had a nurse pointing me in the right direction from the time I set foot in the door. Private hospitals, I thought vaguely, wandering around a corner. Even the staunchest Marxist would have to admit they had their perks.

The ICU waiting room was empty save for Marco's parents, both of their faces pale and drawn. Even in her distress, his mother was incredibly graceful, hair falling wild around her shoulders, bare feet pacing nervously over the tiles. Karma took one look at me in the doorway before rushing across the room and throwing her arms around me. The added weight on my leg made me bite back a scream, a hand settling between her shoulderblades and pressing her into a hug nonetheless because right now, Marco's parents needed comfort more than I did. That's the first thing you learn as a Cancer Kid. Your parents are the first priority, because no chemo, no amputation, no unholy torturous treatment hurts as much as watching them cry over you.

"What happened?" I asked softly, dropping my backpack in the nearest chair and looking over at Marco's dad, who seemed to be holding it together just a little better than his wife.

He shook his head, a hand scrubbing exhaustedly down the side of his face. "He came in right after you left saying he had a headache, took some ibuprofen and went to bed. We woke up a few hours later and he was in his room screaming, just clutching his head and screaming…"

Karma let out a shaky little sob, pressing a hand over her mouth and folding herself into a chair. She and Marco both did that, I noticed, covered their faces when they had an emotion they didn't want to slip out. I felt like I was going to throw up.

"And he just kept it up the whole way here. Couldn't tell us what was wrong. Just cried and kept saying that it hurt over and over and over." Marco's dad looked like a war vet having battlefield flashbacks, his knuckles going white over the back of Karma's chair. "Lack of oxygen. They pegged it within a minute of him being in the ER. He's got so much fluid in his lungs that they can't supply oxygen to his body and everything was starting to shut down."

It was all I could do to stay standing, thinking about the way Marco's breath had rattled as he'd pointed out constellations to me hours before, the feverish heat that his cheek had put off against my hand. His body had been fighting for homeostasis even then. I swallowed hard. "But he got here in time, right? They can help him."

"This happened when he was fourteen," Karma said weakly, slowly beginning to rock back and forth in the chair. "They were able to drain the fluid, but he almost… and he was so much stronger then than he is now. Now they don't know if…"

And with a shaking, heaving sob, she curled in on herself and burst into tears, knees drawing up to her chest and bare heels braced against the edge of the seat. I felt hideously like doing the exact same thing, but something had numbed me, leaving me rooted to the floor and impassive as Marco's dad sat down beside her and pulled her into his arms, whispering something into her hair that only made her cry harder. The door leading to the ICU was right across the room, a red label on frosted glass. A hefty electronic lock that could only be opened by an employee's key card. I shuffled over and pressed my hand against the wood, the closest I could get to him. "I know better than to ask if I can see him."

"They're not even letting _us_ back there right now," Marco's dad shook his head, his hand pressed gently to Karma's back as he helped her to her feet before looking back over at me. "I'm going to take her out to the courtyard, let her get some air. If anyone comes out, could you-"

"Of course," I nodded hurriedly, my hand still pressed against the door as I watched them leave. Several minutes passed like that, the silence of the waiting room broken only by the filtered hiss of the air conditioner. The ICU was probably very carefully soundproofed. I strained my ears to hear anything, doctors' voices, Marco's voice, or God forbid the dying wail of a useless heart monitor, but there was nothing. Sighing defeatedly, I turned around and went to go sit on the couch nestled into the opposite corner.

The moment I put weight on my prosthetic, the pain was back, even worse than it had been on the stairs at my house. And that time, I _did_ let out an agonized yelp, and I _did_ hit the floor, the heels of my hands smacking hard into the cold tile in a way that didn't do much to break my fall. That was my breaking point. With no parents around to protect, the Cancer Kid Code didn't apply, and I let myself choke out a few painful sobs, curling in on myself and trying not to let the too-recent memories wash over me, the faint glimmer of the Metaphor Jar at the bottom of the Bodts' koi pond, those promised adventures in the streets of Paris, the sound of Marco's voice weaving legends around all of those infinite Oblivions hanging up in the sky.

I'd told him that I wouldn't mind getting sucked into his self-contained supernova, but this was too soon.

The ache spreading through my body only made it worse, horrifyingly familiar as I dragged myself up onto the couch and tried to ignore it, breathing heavily as I rolled up my jeans and pulled my prosthetic off in some effort to seek relief, although it didn't do much. I distracted myself. I was usually good at that. The next few hours were spent looking anywhere but at the hatefully silent door of the ICU, staring at my laptop screen, rereading my favorite chapters of _The Infinity Vault _over and over again before I realized that the last thing I wanted to read about right now was cancer. I pulled out my sketchbook, tried to doodle. All I could draw was Marco and the outlines of constellations. Marco's parents went in and out with the cycle of his mother's breakdowns. I was internalizing my panic, whereas Karma was externalizing hers. She would exhaust herself into relative numbness, wind back up, break again. Lather, rinse, repeat. The inside of my head was a war zone, but I was nothing but a silent form curled up on the couch, hands clenched so tightly that I broke three pencils before I gave up and put my sketchbook away.

Hours. Ticking clocks. The sunrise creeping slowly up past the window. A nurse finally came out of the imposing door around noon, in full surgery scrubs with something that looked horrifyingly like blood on her shoulder, and Karma had already started up a steady wail before she told them that they were allowed to go back and see Marco for a few minutes, although he was sleeping. I knew enough of hospitals to know that sleeping was good. They didn't let you sleep unless you were in a reasonably stable condition. The three of them disappeared behind the door and I was alone, breathing a little easier even as the pain flared up again.

Gritting my teeth and trying to breathe through it, I picked up my phone and called Mom, who answered on the first ring. "What's going on over there?"

"Fluid in his lungs. He almost asphyxiated in his sleep, but they've got him stabilized now. They just let his parents in to see him," I said tiredly, rubbing at my leg and hissing a bit. "Hey, do you know if our insurance will go through at St. Rose?"

"It should," Mom said, sounding confused. "Why?"

"No reason. I was just talking to Marco's dad about it. He sells insurance."

I ended the conversation quickly enough after that, didn't hesitate to call up our family doctor after that. Dr. Carolina had a satellite office at St. Rose anyway, so it only took a short description of my symptoms for her to fax in a request.

"How long's it been since you ate, Jean?" she asked, something making a papery, rustling noise on the other end of the line. Printer.

"Uh… lunch yesterday, probably. Around two, three in the afternoon?"

"Good. Don't eat anything else, and head up to the diagnostics lab on the third floor at four PM, okay? I've got you an appointment set up."

God, I knew where that was going. I grimaced, thanking her and hanging my phone up. The clock seemed to go much faster than I wanted it to.

For those who have never had one, it seems almost unbelievable, what a drawn-out, uncomfortable affair a PET scan is. It starts with a twenty-four hour fasting period to make sure your body isn't holding on to any extra glucose that might muddy the results. Then you go and sit in a waiting room for a few more hours, fill out stacks of paperwork, try to ignore the longing groan of your stomach as you look at the snack machines over by the door. And that's just the beginning.

At ten past five, I still hadn't even gotten to the actual test yet. After the paperwork came the first trip into the lab, laying on a crinkly-paper-covered table as a terrifyingly huge needle dosed me up with radioactive dye. Back to the waiting room for another hour and a half as the dye worked its way through my body. Only then did I actually get taken back and put in a god-awful flimsy hospital gown, laid out on a slab with my arms up over my head and shoved into a claustrophobic, humming tube that took pictures of my insides with positrons and the miracles of modern technology. I hadn't had a scan in over a year. It still sucked just as much as I remembered.

The one small benefit was that St. Rose had a diagnostics program that blew Memorial's out of the water. The entire process was much easier, and after I was done and had changed back into my regular clothes, I was given a CD of my scan to bring to my appointment with Dr. Carolina the next day. I nodded and thanked the lab tech, who was actually pretty nice and seemed to realize that shoved in a PET scan tube was the last place I wanted to be, heading back out into the hallway with every nerve in my body set on edge. My laptop was two floors down.

The ICU waiting room was empty when I got there, which meant that Marco's parents were either with him or were out getting lunch. I shut the door softly behind me and limped over to the couch, booting my laptop up and sticking the CD into the drive.

I'd never claimed to be a practiced oncologist, but you learn after so long what certain things on scans are supposed to look like. As a naive little kid, PET scans can be confusing. The spots of cancer gleam like little stars, like Christmas lights, and it seems so confusing, that something so pretty can translate to something so deadly. There's a robbery of innocence in that first PET scan that you never really recover, driven by the realization that few things in the world are as they seem and that _nothing_ in the world is fair. That first PET scan is a mile marker on the road to ruin. Nothing is worse than hearing that you're dying for the first time as you sit in a darkened doctor's office amid pretty lights and the sound of your mother's sobs.

Or at least, that's how I'd always thought of it. I'd clung to the assertion that nothing could be worse than being thirteen and hearing some person I'd just met tell me I was dying. I was proven incredibly wrong when I was seventeen in a waiting room all by myself, drawing my own conclusions as my laptop screen finally opened up the images and I watched the outline of my body become a Christmas tree.

A minute passed. Two. I stared at the screen until lack of activity made my laptop go into sleep mode, the image winking out of existence. Training or no, I didn't have to be an oncologist to see the big picture. Or more accurately, all the little pictures, clinging to the remaining bone of my leg, the shape of what I was pretty sure was my liver, the lining of my chest. I shut my laptop slowly and slipped it into my backpack, moving mechanically again as I stood up and dug around for my keys. I knew what was coming, but it couldn't happen in here, not when Marco's parents could walk back in at any second.

My leg was screaming by the time I made it out to my car, folding myself into the driver's seat and shutting the door behind me.

_Okay, Jean, your autopilot's turning off in five seconds,_ I told myself, looking straight out the windshield. Four. Three. Two. One.

I could see Marco's parents out in the courtyard from the parking lot. His mom was crying again.

Zero.

I shattered. My body curled in on itself like I could hold the sum of my broken parts together, my arms wrapped around my chest in a vain attempt to quell the ache there. My only source of air came in the form of these sharp, horrid-sounding sobs that came a long time before the tears did, thin gasps that slammed between my ribs like razors as I rested my forehead against the steering wheel and resigned myself to whatever it was that my psyche needed to do to come to terms with this. I couldn't afford to do this in the doctor's office tomorrow. Mom would be there.

And that was all it took to turn my ragged sobs into outright wails, the knowledge that we'd be doing this all over again. More nights of hearing Mom and Dad argue about medical bills behind closed doors, more days spent with my body bowed over the toilet puking up food that hadn't even been in my stomach long enough to have any nutritional value, more minutes standing in front of my bathroom mirror and watching hair come out in clumps, more hours in and out of hospitals and pharmacy lines and support groups. Every single minute I'd spent in those years of hell would have to be relived. What would I come away without this time? My other leg? My eyes? My lungs? My heartbeat? Where was the justice in this? Or if not justice, where was my shot at being a Priscilla Romano, my opportunity to make this into something bigger than myself, to be something other than just another victim drawing in sympathy and 'there but for the grace of God go I's from everyone who saw me?

I lost track of time, lost in the avalanche inside my head and hitching up my throat and wracking my body. The car felt close and claustrophobic like the PET scan tube had, the heat trapped inside until my t-shirt was sticking to my skin, but I was no more capable of getting out or even rolling down a window than I was of ever kicking a soccer ball again, of turning a cartwheel, of assuming that the rest of my life would at the very least be comfortable and lackluster. I cried up to and past the point that it made my entire body hurt, my head pounding with every sob and my muscles convulsing mutinously around each gulped breath. I had to say something, had to put words to this because they were the only weapons I had now. I had to rationalize my life falling apart before it actually did, give myself a fighting chance. My phone rested at the ready in my hand, but the only person I wanted to talk to was Marco. Marco, who was a few yards away behind walls and hospital sheets already having enough trouble with dying himself for me to drag my own issues into it. I absolutely wasn't calling Mom and Dad. I would let Dr. Carolina break that news to them; having to do it myself would undo me completely. My eyes were almost too clouded with tears to see the screen, my hands shaking almost too badly to navigate my phone's contact list, but I finally managed to accomplish the only thing I was capable of doing at that point.

I called Eren.

The phone rang three times and clicked. "The fuck do you want, Kirschtein? You interrupted my Blind Ninja Training."

I blubbered weakly for a second before bursting into tears all over again, my hand clenching so hard around the phone that my knuckles cracked.

Eren dropped his usual snark in a millisecond flat, suddenly and gravely serious. "Jean? Jean, what's going on, what's wrong?"

"Marco…" I choked out, rubbing my free hand along my throat like I could soothe the rawness there. "Marco ended up in the ICU, and…" No use. I started sobbing.

Eren gasped on the other end of the line. "Shit, fuck, is he okay? Did… did he make it, is he?"

"He's alive," I coughed, and the reassurance of that fact was enough to relax my throat a little, my ragged breaths fading to shallow little hiccups. "But I was on my way to the hospital and I got this pain in my leg-"

"You mean like from your liner, right? The bum one you said you were gonna get replaced?"

"Worse," I shook my head, voice a rattling croak. "And it kept getting worse and worse, so I called my doctor and got in for some tests."

Even the sound of Eren's breath stopped. Silence for a second, five, ten. "Oh my fucking God."

"It's back." The admission broke me harder than anything else had up to that point, and when I collapsed into sobs for the umpteenth time, each one hit me like a punch to the gut, tears dripping off my chin and dampening the fabric of my jeans. "It's back and it's _everywhere _and I can't do this again, Eren, I can't do it I don't want to I _can't…_"

"Jean," Eren said softly, seeming to know that he wouldn't get any response. He just sat on the other end of the phone and let me cry for a few more minutes before trying again. "_Jean._ Breathe. In and out, slow counts of three."

He started counting out a slow, metronomic rhythm, and after a while I was able to match my breaths to it, swiping my other hand through the sticky tracks of congealing tears on my cheeks. "Okay. Okay, I'm okay."

"No you're not, and you've forgotten that the first step in all this bullshit is admitting that you're not," Eren said harshly, and just like that, our roles from the time leading up to his surgery had been reversed. For the longest time, I'd been the asshole yelling at him to pick himself up by the bootstraps until he did it out of spite. Now, he was going to be that for me. It was the cornerstone of our friendship. "Your cancer is back and you're not okay. But you have to go balls to the wall and fight this shit because the only other option is dying, and if you do that, I'll fucking kick your ass, you hear me?"

"Yeah," I breathed, feeling so, so small.

"This is one step at a time. First you have to pull your shit together and stop sniveling like a little bitch," he snapped, and I could hear the sound of something - his cane? - smacking emphatically against a hard surface. "Do your parents know yet?"

"My doctor's appointment is tomorrow."

Eren exhaled heavily. "Then you'll cross that shitshow bridge when you come to it. Think here, think right now. What is the most important thing to you in this second?"

"Marco," I said without a second's hesitation.

"Jesus Harold Christ, you're besotted," Eren snorted, the sound like a rush of wind in the phone receiver. "But hey, whatever works. Where are you right now?"

"My car," I muttered, finally having the good sense to crack the door open, let the cool breeze soothe my overheated skin.

"And where is Marco?"

"In the ICU. I'm in the parking lot at St. Rose."

"Then you march your ass back in there and be there for him! That's what you can do right now. Heigh ho, Silver! You're not doing anyone any good having a fucking meltdown in your car," he half-shouted, another emphatic bang clacking through the signal. "This isn't a fucking episode of Glee, Kirschtein! There is nothing romantic and beautiful in your tears! If you're going to languish, go do it at Support Group Marco's bedside and stop being a self-pitying fuck!"

"Okay, okay, I'm going, fuck you," I said, giving a stilted little laugh as I climbed out of the car. "And Eren?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

He was quiet for another few moments, and when he spoke again, all the crass motivation had dropped from his voice, leaving behind something softer, reassuring. "I'll be home in a week, man. Hang in there."

I hung up. Took a breath. In and out, slow counts of three. When I saw my reflection in my car window, my eyes were a little red and swollen, my cheeks a little flushed, but not enough for Marco's parents to notice in the midst of everything else. I started walking back towards the hospital, reminding myself that in the face of all the Oblivions out there, my own was insignificant.

Eren had been right. This was one step at a time. I was taking one step, taking two, taking three. It wasn't much, but it was the start of fighting back.


	8. Chapter 8

That night, I slept on the couch in the ICU waiting room after a thirty-minute argument with my mother, who made a valiant effort to get me to come home. I finally won her over with the fact that I hadn't slept in over twenty-four hours and would be dangerous to myself and others behind the wheel of a car, which was true, but I kept the real reasoning behind my extended stay locked firmly behind my clenched teeth. I couldn't bear to go home knowing what I did, spend a night acting normal for my parents only to lead them into a living hell the next day. My talk with Eren had made me a little stronger, but I sincerely doubted that I'd ever be _that_ strong.

The couch was nice, long enough to stretch out on and reasonably comfortable, but I slept fitfully anyway, nightmares I couldn't remember interrupted by stabs of pain in my leg that would wake me up every few hours. The hum of the fluorescent lights overhead was my lullaby, the old zip-up hoodie I'd thrown in my backpack as an afterthought my blanket, but the fact that I managed to sleep at all was a wonder. The first side-effect of cancer is that it makes you feel like you're living on a time bomb. Things like sleeping or laying around playing video games make you feel like you're wasting precious, numbered minutes, but the exhaustion of my body held more sway than the convictions of my mind. Sleep tugged me down stubbornly, over and over again.

I woke up to the smell of coffee - and not hospital coffee, either, the good stuff - under my nose, cracked one eye open to see a freckled, pale hand with elegant fingers placing a to-go cup from Starbucks next to my head.. For a wonderful moment, my groggy mind let me think it was Marco, that everything in the past day had just been a horrible dream and I'd fallen asleep in his backyard, was waking up in his living room. But then the sharp antiseptic smell of a hospital filtered in around the scent of a fresh Columbian roast and my gaze dragged upwards, falling on a tie-dyed maxi dress and long hair and sky-blue eyes. Reality could hit damn hard. Awake for ten seconds, and I already felt like I'd been punched in the gut.

"Thanks, Karma," I muttered, sitting up to take a small sip of coffee and raking a hand through the unholy mess of my hair. "How long was I out?"

"You were fast asleep when David and I got here, sweetie, and that was about three hours ago," she said, folding herself into the space next to me. She looked worlds better than she had yesterday, anxiety still tugging at the corners of her mouth but her face no longer tight with terror and preemptive grief.

"Marco?" I asked hopefully, taking that as a good sign.

"He'll be in ICU for at least another day, but he's mostly out of the woods," Karma smiled softly, reaching up and batting my hand gently away so she could fix my hair herself. "But he's conscious and talking, carried on a conversation with us for about ten minutes before he fell back asleep. I told him you were here. That seemed to make him relax a little more."

"Really?" Despite the way every other aspect of both Marco's situation and my own were sinking like lead into the pit of my stomach, a small, bright blaze kindled in my chest.

She nodded, pressed her palm to my cheek the way my own mother did when she was worried about me. "He's got a certain smile when he talks about you. Are you feeling all right, honey? You look a little green around the gills."

"Yeah, I'm fine," I dismissed the question quickly, taking another drink and trying not to look how I felt, which was, in a word, haggard. "Just stressed and tired like everyone else here. Is there any chance they'll let me back to see him now that he's in better shape?"

Karma's smile turned sad, and she sat her own coffee down on the small table in front of the couch. "I think you've known Marco long enough to know that he's got a proud streak roughly the width of the Mississippi River. He got that from his father. They'll let you back, but he asked them not to. He said he doesn't want you to see him like that."

I pursed my lips and nodded slowly, trying not to feel as selfishly upset as I did. Already, the panic was starting to creep into my veins. Eren was miles away, and I knew that when my next breakdown came, a phone call wouldn't cut it. But my warped sense of logic, or maybe it was my warped heart, had some sort of theory that even just being around Marco would be enough to calm me down at least to the point of functionality, that seeing him not-dead could act as some sort of anchor against the uncertainty into which I'd been so unceremoniously tossed. "If it's okay with you guys, I think I'll stick around until they let him out of ICU. I just… I want to make sure he's okay, you know?"

"It's absolutely okay with us."

"Okay, thanks," I smiled tiredly, relaxing a bit. "God, I don't even know if it's day or night anymore. What time is it?"

Karma looked down at her phone. "About a quarter 'til noon."

My doctor's appointment was in fifteen minutes.

"_Shit!"_ I was off the couch in a fraction of a second, hopping up and down on one foot and scrambling to gather my possessions. "Pardon my French, but I've got to go, I've got a… a thing that I'm late for. Where the _hell_ did I put my leg?!"

"Behind the couch, honey."

Thanking her hurriedly, I practically flailed into my prosthetic and threw my backpack over my shoulder, yanking chargers out of the wall as I headed for the door. "I don't know when I'll be back, but I'll swing by as soon as I can. If you talk to Marco again, tell him I said I'm onto his game and that he's just trying to weasel out of taking me to Olive Garden with the Metaphor Jar fund. It'll make him laugh."

I had one foot in the hallway when Karma's voice piped up again. "Jean, honey, you left a CD or something on the coffee table." And even though I practically lunged back into the waiting room, she already had the case in her hand, frowning down at the very clear St. Rose Hospital Diagnostics Lab label on the front. "What's this?"

"Nothing, just some old records and stuff. My doctor's moving my files to her satellite office here, so I need to go drop this off," I covered lamely, the lie half-baked at best and sitting all wrong on my vocal cords. Lying to Marco's mom made me feel sick, or maybe that was just the killer cells metastasizing into my stomach.

Her hand came down and covered mine before I could turn around again, fixing me with a grave look. "I don't know if we'll be here when you get back, Jean, so I'm just going to tell you this now. I don't know what it is exactly that's going on with you two, but what I do know is that you're willingly camping out in a hospital waiting room just to sit on the other side of a door from my son and make sure he's okay. So whatever it is, I approve of it a hundred percent."

I smiled weakly. "Thank you. And thank you for the coffee."

Great. I was already on the verge of breaking down, and I hadn't even called my mom yet. I waited until I was around the corner from the ICU to punch our home number into my phone, listening to the monotone rings as I hurried across the lobby. Maybe she was out. Maybe I could spare her one more day-

"Hello?"

And maybe the world just wasn't in the mood to cut me a single goddamn break. "Mom, is Dad home?"

"Oh, hey sweetie. How's Marco?"

"Better. Is Dad home or not?"

Mom made a disapproving, tutting sound. "No need to get so snippy. Yes, he's home, do you need him?"

"I need you both to come down to St. Rose, actually." The only reason I hadn't thrown up yet was that there was nothing in my stomach to purge. "I've got an appointment at Dr. Carolina's satellite office."

"Jean, your next checkup's in August," she mumbled, pausing for a second. "Are you sure you didn't - are you crying?"

"No," I croaked, wiping hurriedly at my eyes as if she could see me. "Please just come down here, Mom. Please."

Silence. A sigh. "Okay, we'll see you in ten. Bye."

"Mom, wait!"

"Yes?" she asked.

My mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, trying to figure out how to apologize in advance. I'm sorry I couldn't fight this off the way I was supposed to. I'm sorry you have to go through this again. I'm sorry that you couldn't just have a normal son who starts Varsity Soccer and walks around on two real legs and is the epitome of health. I'm sorry you have to watch me tap my foot on Death's doorstep again.

All I could articulate was a choked "I love you."

"I love you too, sweetie. We'll be there soon." The phone clicked. I collapsed against the nearest wall and tried to remember how to breathe, wondered if this was how Marco felt all the time.

Dr. Carolina's satellite office was a small suite set into a corner of the fifth floor, done up in what was probably meant to be calming shades of green but only managed to look to me like a water balloon of rancid guacamole had exploded all over everything. I signed in two minutes before my appointment time, which earned me a glare from the receptionist, asked her if she could please direct my parents when they arrived, which earned me an even nastier glare. I no longer had it in me to give a damn.

My parents actually made it in before Dr. Carolina did, which was both a blessing and a curse. I had the opportunity to soften the inevitable blow. I had to take a blow myself in order to do it.

Dad took one look at me before I could see him starting to put it together. I could never get away with anything when it came to him, something about him being as much of a shithead teenager as I was so he already knew my game. "Okay, kiddo, you gonna tell us what's going on?"

As if in his heart of hearts he didn't already know.

"This whole thing with Marco just has me really freaked out," I shrugged, trying to sound dismissive. "And my leg was acting up really badly. I got scared and got her to get me in for a scan. I just wanted you guys here in case… you know, if something's…"

Not an _if._ A _when._ I wanted them here so we could get this part over in one fell swoop. My first diagnosis had been just me and Mom, and my scared, fragile thirteen-year-old frame had not been enough to hold her grief no matter how hard I tried. I told Dad three days later because she couldn't bring herself to physically say the words _Jean has cancer. _The admission had raked up my throat like a trail of knives, but I'd forced it out because it was the only way to move forward. Four years later, this situation was as ideal as it could get. Controlled. Structured. And the only person saying the words _Jean has cancer_ would be someone who had said it about more kids than me to more families than mine.

Dr. Carolina came into the exam room - a small, relatively young woman with a kind face that I'd been seeing twice a year since I was twelve - dispensed with the pleasantries and loaded the CD I handed her into a sleek, brand-new laptop that she perched on the counter. Everything was waiting to come crashing down, hanging by the little hourglass on the screen. And then the scan pictures came up.

The reactions were much as expected. Mom burst into tears. Dad's hand on my shoulder tightened almost to the point of pain. Dr. Carolina let out a sad, heavy sigh.

I stared straight ahead, immobile, betraying nothing of how everything beneath my skin was imploding. I'd had my own self-indulgent meltdown the day before. Now I had to help my parents through theirs.

"Well, this kind of speaks for itself," Dr. Carolina finally said, tracing her finger along the path the cancer had taken through my body. "It's back in the right leg, smaller mets in the liver, up into the thoracic cavity, but what's worrying me is how much we've got here around the heart."

I became suddenly, bizarrely self-aware of my heart at that, feeling it beat insistently against my ribs. How long until it stopped? I swallowed thickly, reached down and grabbed Mom's hand when I saw that it was shaking. "Okay, how are we approaching this?"

"I'm not your oncologist, so I can't say much on the subject," she muttered, staring at the scan again. "But I've seen cases that go down this route before, and I'm just going to warn you, Jean, the treatment regimen is… aggressive."

Aggressive. I could already taste the bile-laced remains of every future meal from that point to who-knew-when, could already feel the quiet gratitude that I'd held onto my beanie collection since I was one of those people who really just couldn't pull off being bald. Exhaling heavily, I let my eyes drift shut for a second, not wanting to look at the scans anymore. "Okay."

"You're taking this very calmly."

"I've had lots of practice with bad scans," I said flatly, biting back a scream.

Dr. Carolina gave us all her heartfelt condolences, set up another appointment in a few months, and wrote up a referral to my oncologist and a prescription for some heavy-duty pain meds to help with my leg before she left the room. We were all quiet. Mom started sniffling again.

"Hey, it's okay, I'm okay," I lied, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and that was all it took for her to curl around me and sob like her world was breaking (it was, and so was mine), shaking as I pulled her in closer and perched my chin on her shoulder. "I'm okay, Mom."

Dad and I made eye contact behind her back. He tilted his head as if to ask _Really?_ I gave him an almost imperceptible shake of my head. He nodded. Maybe I still couldn't afford to break, but that little bit of truth felt like a luxury, granting me enough thinking space to stand up and grab my prescription with a sigh, looking at the door. There was too much sadness in this room, and knowing that I was the cause of it wasn't doing any wonders for my mental state. I still needed some time away from the terrifying reality of my situation before I could cope with it for extended periods of time. "I'll go get this filled, and then I'm going to stay here until they let Marco out of ICU. Please, _please_ don't make me fight you guys on this. He should be out by tomorrow, and then I'll come home and we'll figure out what we're doing, okay?"

Mom was still crying too hard to really say too much of anything, but Dad walked over to me, pulling me into an exceptionally rare hug. "Do what you need to do, Jean. We'll be okay."

I looked over at Mom, tilted my head as if to ask _Really?_ He gave me an almost imperceptible shake of his head. My old man and I may have butted heads on occasion, but at least we could be honest with each other. I walked out of the exam room feeling hollow, scooped out by a sense of hopelessness that was starting to grow where my guts had been. There was a pharmacy a few blocks over.

I only made it as far as my car before I was an absolute fucking mess again, shaking and crying but stubbornly refusing to give Eren another call. I tamed my psyche by myself, stomping it down into submission and bottling all the fear and anxiety and utter _rage_ at how unfair all of this was into a compressed space. I reserved a small corner in the back of my mind for it, shoved it so far down that even I couldn't touch it. Unhealthy, but functional, and functionality was what mattered. Functionality was what made it possible for me to drive to the CVS on Stohess Avenue and pick up my meds and smile at the lady behind the counter, what made it possible for me to walk back into the ICU waiting room half an hour later and have a perfectly cordial conversation with Marco's parents. I waited until they went back through the door to see Marco again before I shook two Vicodin out onto my palm and swallowed them with the cold dregs of my coffee, lying back across the couch. Pain meds had always made me loopy, and the pills hit my empty stomach hard, setting the room spinning around me until I closed my eyes against the nauseous back-and-forth pitch of my vision. When I fell asleep, it was long and deep and dreamless.

The pills did what they advertised. For a few hours, I didn't know pain.

I woke up to a fresh cup of coffee and a wrapped Subway sandwich on the coffee table next to me, although the waiting room was empty. Karma must have dropped the food off before either going home or going in to be with Marco. Groaning slightly, I grabbed for the sandwich and tore into it with a ferocity that made me glad there was no one else around, my stomach that had been empty for two days practically wailing in relief. Half of the footlong later, I sat up on the couch and grabbed for my phone, checking how long I'd slept. It was eight in the morning. I'd been out for sixteen hours straight. Munching contemplatively on the rest of my sandwich, I flicked through an onslaught of text messages from Mom asking if I was okay and when I was coming home, ran a hand through my hair and realized with a grimace that I really needed to shower. Little things. Mundane things. I could focus on them long enough to take my attention off the terrifying shadow looming over everything. I was standing up and reaching for my backpack to go hunt down the courtesy showers when the door of the ICU swung open and out waltzed a sunny, smiling Karma Bodt, followed by her husband pushing a wheelchair bearing an emaciated ghost of Marco, his cheekbones sharper than usual and his skin pallid, every freckle sticking out like a splotch of ink. Still, the sight of him was enough to chase off every ugly, incapacitating thing in the back of my head for a moment, a toothy grin stretching across my face as I hurried across the waiting room.

"Hi," I said.

"Hi yourself," he said, voice sounding like the last autumn leaf clinging to a branch. But he smiled. I remembered his mom saying that he had a certain smile for me, wondered if that was actually true. "Have you seriously been here for three days?"

"School's out; I had nothing better to do."

"You're an idiot," Marco laughed tiredly, the circles under his eyes so dark that it looked like someone had punched him. "And you look awful."

It took every ounce of strength I had in me to smirk. _Tell him,_ my brain screamed at me, the blooming panic back in full force. _Just tell him and get it over with._ Instead, I shrugged and ate the last bite of my sandwich, adjusting my backpack on my shoulder. "Probably from three days sleeping on a couch. I'm not pulling off the sexy, rumpled look?"

He was being discharged, so I followed the little parade of people out through the waiting room and down the hallway, staying beside Marco's wheelchair constantly. He rolled his eyes and looked up at me, jabbing a bony finger into my arm. "You're pulling off the homeless look. Go get some sleep."

The last place I wanted to be was home. There would be no rest there, not with the charade of composure I had to keep up for my family's sake. We stopped in the parking lot beside his mom's minivan. _Just tell him._ "Forgive me for neglecting personal hygiene when I was wracked with worry for you. God forbid that I smell bad as I languish with a ferocity that puts _Gone With The Wind_ to shame outside the door of the ICU."

"Dollar in the jar, Jean."

"The jar is still at the bottom of your koi pond, doofus."

Marco stood up slowly from the wheelchair, his discharge process officially complete. He was a little unsteady on his feet, but when I held out and arm for him to grab for stability, he used the space to step in closer to me and wrap his arms gingerly around my waist, everything about him bird-boned and fragile. Before I could tell myself not to do it, I was clinging to him as well, carefully, my head bowing forward until I could rest my forehead against his shoulder and whisper, "You scared the shit out of me."

"I'm sorry," he murmured, and it sounded sincere, his hand splayed out between my shoulder blades for a moment before he stepped back and fixed me with a little smile. "But you shouldn't have worried. I wasn't going to bite the dust before we got to meet Levi Rivaille. No way, man."

"I would have been extremely offended if you had," I forced myself to laugh, feeling like some part of me had been severed as Marco moved away from me entirely and got into the van. It was a good eighty degrees outside, and I felt suddenly, inexplicably cold. "And I would've had to take Eren with me. He gets unbearably cranky when he travels."

Marco looked like he was barely awake, eyes half-lidded as he reached out the open car door and grabbed my hand. "Go get some sleep in a real bed, Jean."

"You too. I'll come over soon and get the Metaphor Jar out of the pond so you can keep turning a profit on my eloquence." Squeezing his hand, I tried to quell the pounding of my diseased heart, its drumbeat in my ears sounding like _tell him, tell him, tell him._ No. Not yet. Out of all the people in my life who deserved to not worry, Marco was tied with my parents at the top of the list. My parents had to know. He didn't, at least not for a while. I let go of his hand and shut his door, standing in the parking lot and waving as they drove off.

After the minivan was out of sight, I had to laugh, cold and humorless, at the irony. Three days ago, I'd told him that his logic was flawed for doing the same thing, and yet there I stood, fighting tooth and nail to keep Marco Bodt from falling headlong into the pull of my own personal supernova.


	9. Chapter 9

The next week passed in a blur. I stayed in my room as much as possible, not only to avoid having to see my mother look like she was going to cry every time she saw me, but because I didn't trust myself to hold it together for more than an hour at a time. I could put on my plastic smile for as long as it took to eat dinner, to arrange an appointment with my oncologist, to sit in the living room and watch a World Cup game with Dad, but it would start to falter after a while, that old paralysis clawing up through my chest, and I'd either feign a headache or remember something I hadn't done or say I was going to the bathroom, anything to let me get behind a closed door and lose my grip.

It had become a quiet decimation by that point, mostly because the walls in my house were thin enough that me crying or screaming would be easily overheard, partly because I was just _tired._ The business of coming to terms with the fact that Death was after me with teeth and claws bared again was exhausting, to the point that even when I was freaking out all I could do was curl up in a ball in my bed or on the bathroom floor and shake silently, my breath hitching stubbornly in my lungs. I could no longer cry about it. Some part of me was certain that if I started, I'd never stop. I dealt with it. Not well, but I dealt with it.

Marco was at home, still recovering from his stint in the ICU, and sometimes it was only looking down and seeing a text from him that could convince me to keep functioning for a little bit longer. I wanted to see him, but the idea of actually leaving my house and driving to his, of getting up and walking around outside my own personal bubble like nothing was wrong… it was almost laughable. And so things continued, fell into a rut. Wake up. Plastic smile. Breakfast. Back downstairs, spend an hour fighting for a full breath and tugging at my own hair to feel grounded. Video games. Plastic smile. Lunch. Excuse myself to the bathroom and turn the sink on full blast so the ragged, panicked gasps couldn't get outside the door. Take a Vicodin and get so strung-out that dinner passed in a blur. Video games. Bed. Nightmares. Get up the next day and do it again.

Eren got back from Blind Guy Bootcamp on a Saturday, but I didn't get the luxury of speaking freely with him. The stairs into the basement were still a lot for him to tackle, which meant that we had to sit in the living room and hang out. Eren had odd habits that were new developments in the wake of losing one of his senses. He wouldn't always look in the direction of whoever he was talking to, sometimes staring over their shoulder or at a slight angle. And he'd become obsessed with tactile sensation. Wherever he was standing or sitting, his hands would work tirelessly, mapping out the texture of a couch cushion or skating over the seams of wallpaper. It helped him compensate, he said.

"So, Dad says you've got an appointment tomorrow," Eren observed after I got him situated on the couch, his fingers pressing along the arm of the couch and into the back cushion. The supreme irony of Eren's life was that his father was a pediatric oncologist whose son had fallen victim to a cancer so rare that even he had been helpless to do anything other than rip out the parts of his body that were already infected. Dr. Jaeger was nationally acclaimed in his field, sure, but I'd always wondered what that particular slap in the face had felt like, watching something you'd dedicated your whole life to fighting claim your kid as collateral.

"Yeah, two o'clock," I nodded, watching Mom carefully as she walked down the hallways with a pile of laundry. She was still within earshot, so I tried to inject a little more utterly fake optimism into my voice. "You know, get on it right out of the gate. It was cool of him to work me in like that."

The door of the laundry room clicked shut, and I deflated, slumping back into the couch cushion. Eren's hand skittered over the upholstery until it hit my leg, his head turning not-quite towards me. "Okay, so how are you? _Really._"

"Your hand is uncomfortably close to my dick."

"Shut up!" Eren snapped, flailing in my direction until he landed a solid smack on my arm and scowling at me. "I asked you a question, you evasive little shit."

I rubbed a hand across my face and lowered my voice, just in case Mom could still hear over the hum of the dryer and the closed door. "I'm a fucking wreck. But I'm handling it."

"Your parents?"

"Think I'm fine."

Eren nodded approvingly. "And Marco?"

"I haven't told him yet," I said tightly, hands balling into fists at my sides as my chest spasmed. Breathe. In and out, slow counts of three. "Didn't want to spring it on him while he's trying to get better after that whole shitstorm with the ICU."

That was the reason I'd been giving myself for not picking up the phone and breaking the news to Marco so we could both move on with what was left of our lives. If I'd cared to examine my motivations a bit more deeply, I would have seen them for the much more selfish reality of what they were. When I thought of Marco, all I could see was his fragile frame in the wheelchair coming out of the ICU, all I could hear was the echo of his voice saying that he didn't want to hurt me. Marco kept me far enough away as it was with that equation one-sided. I was deeply, inexplicably afraid that he'd push me away entirely when he found out that both of us were black holes waiting to happen.

"He deserves to know," Eren said.

"I know," I sighed. Marco deserved a lot of things, namely lungs that worked and remission and several more years than what he had left. My honesty was not at the top of the list, but it was the only thing on it that I was capable of giving to him. "I just… I'm working on it. This isn't easy."

"No shit, Sherlock." Snorting, Eren leaned back into the couch cushions, waving a hand through the air in front of him. "What was it… oh yeah, 'Cancer is hard because even in this age of staggering technology, natural selection is still gunning for our asses.'"

My jaw dropped. "You read _The Infinity Vault?_"

"No, but one of the hot volunteers at rehab read it to me," he smirked, adjusting his sunglasses. "Or at least she sounded hot. I don't know. I got her number before I left, though."

"On the prowl again, it would seem." For the first time in over a week, smiling wasn't a chore. "I missed you, you asshole."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm sure my absence was lamented constantly," Eren muttered, kicking his heels up on the coffee table. "Your boyfriend Skyped me more than you did, but maybe that's because he's a decent human being and you're a walking bag of dicks."

"He's not my boyfriend," I said a little more sharply than I meant to.

"Really? Why not?"

It was a long while before I could come up with a solid answer to that. Because I didn't have the balls to ask him to be. Because it was _Marco_ and somehow the world 'boyfriend' felt terribly inadequate when it came to describing him, like there had to be some higher term. Because he was indefinitely terminal and I didn't even know what the hell I was yet, only that the heart beating in my chest was ridden with something bent on my destruction. Because he didn't want to hurt me. Because I didn't want to hurt him.

"Because we're both supernovas," I finally sighed, looking up at the ceiling and trying to picture stars there. "And who the hell knows what happens when two black holes try to suck each other in."

"I can't tell if that's a sex joke or just another one of your goddamned metaphors," Eren said, looking at the armchair by the fireplace instead of me. "Hey, go see if your mom missed me enough to hook a brother up with some pizza rolls."

Eren's mom came to pick him up a couple of hours later, leaving me strangely restless as I wandered around the house, thinking about our conversation. After my fifth time opening the refrigerator door only to walk away without any food, I finally sighed and walked back through the hallway, grabbing my car keys off the rack. "Mom? I'm going out."

And of course, that dropped an atom bomb. The presence of cancer in my body had transformed me into a baby bird in my mother's eyes, fragile and helpless and utterly incapable of leaving the nest. I was surprised she hadn't started pre-digesting my food for me. She came out of the laundry room with a look that equated more to me telling her that I was planning to jump off a bridge than telling her that I was taking a step off of our front porch. "What? Why? Where are you going? Why do you need to go? Do you want me to drive you?"

"I'm going out. Because I've been cooped up in this house for a week and I'm going stir-crazy. I'm going to Marco's. Because I need to fish a jar with fifty-one dollars in it out of his koi pond. And I'm capable of driving myself." No plastic smile, no false optimism. It was the most sincere I'd been in a week, and it felt liberating. For all of the misery I'd been through since that day at the hospital, it was sort of a relief to find out that a lot of it was self-inflicted. I rolled all the windows in my car down and blasted my music all the way to Marco's house, and I was finally able to breathe without counting out a meter for it.

It was still early enough in the day that Marco's dad was at work, and when I got out of my car and popped open the gate to the back yard, a glance through the window in the garage showed that Karma's minivan wasn't there either. Maybe they were at a doctor's appointment. Shrugging, I made my way through the garden and around to the yard, the heavy scent of hyacinths invading my brain. The hill down to the koi pond wasn't steep, but the slope was smooth enough that it was easy to trace the path of the jar, rolling from the spot where Marco and I had been straight down into the water. Kneeling on the flat stones that outlined the pond, I could see a rippling refraction of the jar at the bottom, surrounded by fat white and gold koi fish. I leaned forward slightly, sinking up to my elbow in the slightly murky water. There was algae growing on the sides of the pond, which was good for the fish but kind of gross for me. I couldn't even touch the top of the jar.

"Oh, come _on,_" I groaned, sitting back up and rolling the sleeve of my t-shirt up over my shoulder. My only other option at this point was laying down on my stomach at the edge of the pond, reaching in until the water came up to my armpit. The tips of my fingers barely brushed the lid of the jar. I scooted over further on the stones, rolling over on my side to extend my reach another inch or so.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Marco's voice piped up right behind me, and my entire body convulsed in surprise, knocking me off balance on the rickety stones. I felt what was coming a split second before it happened, a stream of colorful profanity spiraling past my lips before I flopped right over into the koi pond, sputtering and flailing. When I finally got my footing, waist deep in the water, there was algae in my hair and something gross and brown smeared along my arm. I gave Marco a nervous smile, holding the rescued Metaphor Jar up in reference.

"You know we have a net in the shed, right?" he said, crossing his arms. Usually such a sharp dresser, I'd never seen him look so casual, practically swimming in a Grateful Dead t-shirt that was about three sizes too big for him, gray sweatpants hanging low on his hips, bare feet. He looked tired, but he also looked about ten times better than he had leaving the hospital, most of the color returned to his cheeks and that old look of exasperation the same as it ever was. "And it's usually customary to ring the doorbell before you go sneaking into someone's backyard. I looked out the window and thought you were a burglar until I realized that there was only one blonde idiot in the world who would have any business in my dad's koi pond."

"I didn't think you were home - agh, God, fish in my pants, fish in my pants, _fuck!_" I let out a strangled yelp, batting at my old pair of soccer shorts until a very disgruntled-looking koi swam off in the opposite direction. That crisis solved, I looked up and gave Marco a winning smile, trying to comb the algae out of my hair with my fingers. "Nice to see you too, Marco. You're looking better."

He pointed his phone at me and pressed something on the screen, bringing forth the sound of a camera shutter. "For posterity. And for when I need to remind you of what a dork you are." A slow, bright smile settled on his lips, and that was when I really knew that he was back to himself. "Get out of the pond and come inside and take a shower. You look like some vintage horror monster that crawled out of a swamp."

"_It Came From The Koi Pond!_" I snickered, crawling clumsily out of the water and getting to my feet. Marco looked horrified when I took a step closer to him. "Want a hug?"

"Don't you dare!" he half-shouted warningly, backing up a few more steps and glaring at me.

"Have it your way," I replied breezily, heading up the hill and trying to come to terms with the fact that I didn't feel like there was a ten-ton weight on my shoulders. I was sopping wet, filthy, and had cancer, and I was smiling so wide that it ached in the best possible way. Marco wasn't the supernova he thought he was. He was a sun.

As it turned out, Karma had left to go grocery shopping just before I arrived. Marco informed me of this as he picked my waterlogged clothes up off the bathroom floor while I was in the process of shampooing the koi pond sludge out of my hair. He'd been in his room watching a marathon of _The Walking Dead_ when he'd looked out his window and seen me fumbling around in the pond, which prompted him to come outside and scare the living shit out of me. My clothes were in the washing machine by the time I got out of the shower, which left me with a whole other predicament. Marco's clothes wouldn't fit me. His pants would be too long and the shoulders of his shirts would be too narrow. Standing in the door of the laundry room with a towel around my waist and an utter look of exasperation, I asked if I could just borrow another pair of his sweatpants, to which he flushed and replied that he only owned one pair.

And that's the story of how I ended up sitting on Marco Bodt's kitchen counter in nothing but a pair of borrowed boxers, eating an apple and waiting for the dryer to buzz.

"Never a dull moment, is there?" I deadpanned, pulling the waterlogged bills out of the Metaphor Jar and laying them out on the counter to dry.

"Not with you, there isn't," Marco laughed, leaning against the counter and grabbing an apple for himself from the bowl of fruit sitting there. "I'm glad you showed up, though. I've been going nuts."

"Same here," I nodded, setting the jar down carefully. "Mom's been hovering around me like a helicopter. I'm surprised I managed to get out of the house."

He frowned, looking confused, and said, "Why would she do that?"

A ball of freezing lead plummeted straight into my stomach. I had been so relazed, so at ease that I'd forgotten that Marco was yet another person on the long list of recipients of my plastic smile, that there was a version of me to be upheld other than what I actually was. One slip of my stupid mouth, and everything was on the verge of falling apart. _Tell him,_ my brain insisted wearily.

"She's just been kind of emotional ever since what happened with you," I waved the question off, taking a bite of my apple and shrugging nonchalantly.

"Huh, weird," Marco mumbled, giving me a long, contemplative look before he turned away and peeked into the laundry room. "We can probably go ahead and pull your stuff out of the dryer."

I smirked. "In a hurry because my bodacious bod is making you all hot and bothered?"

"No, I'm in a hurry because I don't want to have to explain to my mom why there's a half-naked boy in her kitchen when she gets home."

"I could always lay across the counter and pose provocatively to make it worse, maybe suggestively eat a banana-" I was cut off by a wad of dryer-warm clothes hitting me in the face.

"Shut up and put your pants on," Marco sighed, walking out of the kitchen with a hand pressed to his forehead.

I got dressed and followed him to his room, which was much cleaner than my own. The space looked a lot like somewhere Marco would spend a lot of time, the walls a soft blue and tastefully decorated with framed posters of a few indie bands, one entire side of the room occupied by bookshelves. The bed was a big, antique-looking four-poster with covers that were a little darker blue than the walls, the space beyond the nightstands occupied with softly whirring medical machinery I couldn't identify.

"That one's my oxygen compressor," he explained when he saw me looking at it, a hand waving vaguely in the direction of the other machine. "And that's a BiPAP machine. After I got out of the ICU my doctor said I had to start sleeping with it again. It basically breathes for me."

"Sounds unpleasant," I frowned.

"Nah, it's not bad," Marco shook his head, grinning. "I like to close my eyes and pretend I'm Darth Vader."

"And you said _I_ was a dork," I laughed, sitting on the edge of his bed. "Although your sense of humor in the face of adversity is enviable."

"I'll trade my sense of humor for your remission," he said, his smile fading slowly.

_Tell him._

There was a fairly nice electronic keyboard set up in the far corner of Marco's room, and he wheeled his tank over beside the bench and sat down, looking at me intently for a moment. "You okay?"

"I, um… I actually need to tell you something," I muttered, wishing I could look away from him and make this moderately easier on myself. I couldn't. Not even my most valiant effort could make me tear my eyes away from him, the way he raised an expectant eyebrow at me, the slight, confused quirk of his lips.

"Okay?"

"You should play something for me," I said, changing the subject. As much as I obsessed over real heroes in a world that lacked them, I had a very small capacity for bravery.

Marco shrugged and spun around the bench, turning the keyboard on and settling his hands carefully into place. The day I met him, he'd mentioned that he played piano recreationally and not very well, and he'd been telling the truth. What he played wasn't an exceptionally difficult piece, but he played it earnestly, eyes narrowed in concentration and hands curved gracefully over the keys. For the first time, I came to the understanding that beauty and virtuosity were not mutually inclusive. Sometimes the chords could be off, the timing wrong, and it - he - still had the capability to be the heartbreak kind of beautiful. Helen of Troy had a face that launched a thousand ships, but when I looked at Marco all I could see was myself circumnavigating the world in a rowboat. His was not the kind of beauty that drove men to war. It was the kind that drove seventeen-year-old boys to stupid, stupid decisions.

He finished playing and turned back around, tilting his head. "What did you want to tell me?"

It was in that moment that I fully, actively realized that I was in love with him. More importantly, it was in that moment that I realized I loved him enough to lie to him for as long as I possibly could, even if the end meant him hating me or pushing me away. Hurting was part of the human condition, but for now, at least, I could protect him from it. That was my larger purpose, my Infinity Vault. It felt good to finally have one.

"I just… wanted to tell you that you need to apply for your passport soon if you don't already have one," I said, trying not to sound like I was choking on the words. "They usually take about a month to go through, and I kind of want to go to Paris before school starts."

Marco's face fell, his hands knotting nervously together in his lap. "I actually… I'm so sorry, Jean. I can't go to Paris. I brought it up at my follow-up and my doctor said that international travel was just too risky with everything that had happened."

"What?" I asked numbly.

Marco just nodded, looking like everything in him was heavy. "Yeah."

"But it's your _Wish_." Indignant, I hopped up from the bed and raked a hand through my hair, scowling. "They can't pull that shit. It's your Wish."

"No, it's _your_ Wish. I just can't come along for the ride," he smiled sadly. "Just… just make sure you get Levi Rivaille to tell you what happened to Archie the Corgi, okay?"

"I don't accept this. This is absolute bullshit and I'm _not_ going to Paris without you, Marco, forget it," I fumed, pacing angrily between the bed and the door. "We'll figure something out. We'll make it work."

"Jean." Marco grabbed my hand as I passed him, holding me there until I turned around to look at him. His eyes were dark and bottomless and so much sadder than I ever wanted to see them. He looked so incredibly tired. "There comes a day when we get too old for our Wishes to mean anything anymore. We live in a world that doles out things like cancer indiscriminately. It's not predisposed to hand out Wishes the same way, and sometimes things just don't work out the way we want them too."

I tried very, very hard to not start shaking. "I know that."

God, did I know that.

I left before Karma got home to avoid any chance of Marco getting in trouble for having someone over while his parents were gone, drove home with every mile I put between us heaping another ton of weight back on my shoulders. Back into the rut I went. Home. Plastic smile. Dinner. Downstairs for an early bedtime because I had a big day tomorrow. But instead of curling into the middle of my bed and having another silent meltdown, I flipped open my laptop, pulling up my email and addressing a new message to Hange Zoë.

_Dear Ms._ _Zoë,_

_I'm sorry to bother you again, but seeing as your employer professes to not have a personal email, this is the only method I have of contacting him. If you could pass the following message on to Mr. Rivaille, I would very much appreciate it._

_Many thanks,  
Jean Kirschtein_

_Dear Mr. Rivaille,_

_I've recently been giving some thought to what you said in the postscript of your last email to me, about which was more important, the bond between an author and his readers, or the author and the integrity of his work. I've come to the conclusion that integrity is subjective. Its definition is left up to those who want to define it, much in the way that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There can be no definite presence of integrity in something, because integrity isn't a naturally occurring phenomenon. I think you and I are both aware that the world has no integrity. In fact, I have recently come to the conclusion that the world is a filthy whore. It screws everyone. But people are a different matter. People are undeniably present, and in some sort of paradoxical twist that I'm honestly too tired to explore right now, people are what decide the integrity or lack thereof in the things they observe. If an author were to write a book and keep it to himself, never to be seen by another pair of eyes, then he alone would be responsible for assigning its level of or lack of integrity. However, when an author writes a book and shares it with thousands of readers, the decisions involving the integrity of that book are now in many, many hands. What I am essentially trying to say is that the bond between an author and his work that exists when he is writing the book and the bond between an author and his readers are the same thing. That bond expands infinitely outward with each pair of new hands that picks up a published work, and the author can now be held accountable to the level of integrity that each new pair of hands finds in said work. If there is to a be a debate on the matter, this is my side of it._

_Yes, I am politely calling you an unethical bastard,  
Jean Kirschtein_

Fuming to myself, I hit the 'send' button and sent a the electronic vessel of my rage flying off to Paris. The hateful thing, I thought as I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, was that Marco had been absolutely right. The world had never been predisposed to handing out Wishes. It was more fond of dangling them over your head and laughing while you jumped for them only to fall and bust your ass. The clock ticked on, and it was four in the morning when I sat up and grabbed my laptop again, pulling up the webpage for the St. Rose Foundation.

The world could keep its backhanded handouts. I'd take the satisfaction of going after my own Wish.


	10. Chapter 10

I didn't fall asleep that night, wide awake right up to the point when we left for my oncologist's appointment the next day. I'd forgotten how garish the office was, all bright primary colors and fanciful shapes designed to comfort the kids sitting there and watching their bodies devour themselves. Maybe it would have worked on a five-year-old, but the self-proclaimed consummate cynic seventeen-year-old sitting on the exam table just thought it was sort of creepy, dressing up Death to look like a kindergarten classroom. I was one year shy of not even being able to go to a pediatric oncologist anymore. I found myself wondering as my parents and I waited for Dr. Jaeger to come in if it would feel any better, facing this down with a cancer doctor for grown-ups.

No, I decided. It would be the same chemo drugs dripping into my arms, the same sickness and probably the same results. Despite all the attempts that the tacky wallpaper and framed paintings of teddy bears on the walls made, you couldn't infantilize cancer. I'd always thought the regular offices at Memorial looked gloomy, anyway. Besides, it was marginally comforting having my care in the hands of someone I knew more as Eren's dad than some impassive face in a lab coat.

Dr. Jaeger looked overstressed and under-rested when he came in, the same way he always did, but his professional demeanor relaxed into a wry, sad expression as he shut the door behind him and looked over at us. "Really hoped I wouldn't be seeing you all here again."

I put on my plastic smile, painfully aware that Mom was watching for my reaction. "Hey, it's better for your grocery bill that I'm here and not at your house eating all your food, right?"

"Well, at least you're keeping your spirits up," Dr. Jaeger said, looking a little surprised at that as he pulled up my scans and started going off on the spiel about how we were going to tackle this. Standard fare. Same old prescriptions. Chemo.

I grimaced at that, sounding more scared than I meant to when I spoke up, interrupting him. "So, uh… how long until I lose my hair?"

What I really meant was _How long can I hide this from Marco until I physically can't hide it anymore?_

"Well, about that," Dr. Jaeger muttered, looking down at the tablet he had in his hands and swiping at it until whatever is was that he wanted came up. "We've got the option to put you on a new chemo drug that just got out of trials. Good news is no hair loss. Bad news is that the side effects are pretty rough. You'll feel much worse post-treatment than normal chemo if that's the route we take, so if you want to weigh your options-"

"I'll do it," I said, not hesitating for a second.

"Sweetie, are you sure?" Mom asked, reaching up and carding a hand through my hair. "Is it really worth it? You've still got your hats."

"I'll do it," I repeated, looking pointedly at my lap instead of at her. "Growing my hair back out was a pain in the ass last time, and I don't want to look like a cueball for my senior pictures."

And just like that, my time frame of protecting Marco from the truth expanded indefinitely. I could hide the pill bottles when he came over, could wear hoodies to cover a PICC line in my arm, could slap on my plastic smile and bite back the urge to throw up until he left. I sat up a little straighter, optimistic.

Dr. Jaeger scribbled something down on a clipboard before looking back at me. "All right, then we'll start you off on six cycles, one week with two weeks between. Can you make it down on Friday?"

I nodded, the effort of looking like I was okay starting to ache.

Everyone said their goodbyes, and my parents left the exam room before I did. I told Mom I'd be out in a minute, that I just had some questions about whether I could get pain meds that wouldn't get me high as a kite. They walked back out to the waiting room, and it was just me and Dr. Jaeger standing there. I sighed, my plastic smile dropping like a stone and my shoulders slumping as I looked up at him. "Okay, the people we have to bullshit are gone. How long do I have?"

He stammered a bit, looking down at his clipboard. "Well, that's not really… I wouldn't say that…"

"It's a simple enough question. We both saw the scans. I just want to know what kind of time frame I'm looking at here."

Dr. Jaeger sighed. "With or without treatment?"

"With. I can't let my parents think I'm throwing in the towel," I said tightly, looking at the door they'd just walked back through. For their sake, they had to believe that I'd come out of my second round with terminal illness the same as I'd come out of the first.

"A realistic projection would be around seven months," he said, looking down at his clipboard again. "But there's always the chance of remission, Jean."

"Put a number on that chance for me."

Silence for a long moment. "About five percent."

A crushing weight slammed into my chest. A one-in-twenty chance at life. Seven months. The clock on the wall seemed deafening with every tick. I swallowed hard and nodded curtly, looking down at the small pinprick scar on my right arm where my last PICC line had been. "Okay. Any way we can just do temporary IV's for the first cycle? I've got some plans that would be complicated by a PICC line."

Dr. Jaeger nodded and jotted the request down, looking incredibly tired. "It also goes without saying that even if I wanted to, I can't tell Eren. Patient confidentiality. How much of this you share with him is up to you."

I felt suddenly, violently ill, teeth clenching. No, I would not be telling Eren that I was dying. That was something I needed to keep to myself for everyone's sake. It's easier to get suddenly and violently sucked into a black hole than knowing what's coming for however many months. "Okay. I'd better get going before my parents worry. Thanks, Dr. Jaeger."

"And Jean?"

"Yeah?"

He paused for a second, pursing his lips like he wasn't sure he should continue speaking. "If I've ever seen a kid who can beat these odds, it's you. I wouldn't throw in the towel just yet."

Unsure of what to say to that, I just nodded and walked out to meet my parents in the waiting room.

I was strangely numb in the aftermath, expecting to collapse into an utter meltdown as soon as I was in my room but instead just sitting silently on the edge of my bed, staring blankly at the wall. It was at least a relief to have numbers and figures and percentages on it now, a certain amount of certainty. There was an odd peace in it. I wondered if this was how Marco could be so sunny all the time, reassured in his own impending end. His diagnosis had a one hundred percent chance of fatality, but the only independent variable was when that fatality would come.

What a joke. Being born comes with a one hundred percent chance of fatality. Death catches up to everyone one day. Marco and I were things for everyone else to pity because ours were coming quicker than theirs.

Seven months.

I picked up my phone and called Karma's cell while simultaneously grabbing for my laptop and pulling up my newest email from the St. Rose Foundation. Time to see just how good I was at battling impossible odds.

Two days later, I was sitting across a booth from Marco at Olive Garden, the Metaphor Jar between us like a prolific centerpiece. He looked as put-together as ever, slacks and a blue button-up with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and I'd ditched my band shirts for my one nice pair of jeans and a polo shirt. This was a special occasion.

"So, here we are," Marco said, grinning down at the jar.

"Here we are," I nodded.

"I'm so glad to be out of my house," he sighed, picking at his salad and looking up at me. "Mom's been acting so weird the past few days."

"I'd be more worried if your mom was acting normal, honestly."

"True," Marco laughed, reaching out and spinning the Metaphor Jar around contemplatively between elegant fingers. "So what have you been up to, other than swimming in koi ponds?"

"Playing a lot of video games and sending angry emails to Levi Rivaille." That much was the truth. I just left out the part about going to my cancer doctor and willingly signing up for a chemo drug that would make me feel like a pile of shit and finding out that in all likelihood I had seven months to live. Pick your battles.

Marco smirked slightly, taking a sip of iced tea and shaking his head. "I think it's hysterical how personally offended you are by that book's lack of an ending."

"What surprises me is how personally offended you _aren't _by it," I snorted, waving a breadstick accusingly at him. "You're the one with the deep abiding obsession with this book, but all you're pissed off about is that we don't know what happens to the dog. Aren't you angry about the fact that you didn't get closure?"

"I don't think closure is a real thing," he shrugged, lips pressing together into a thin, contemplative line. "I think it's something that people tell themselves they have so they can sleep better at night. I mean, as far as reality goes, the book's pretty accurate. You don't get closure when you're terminal. You die right in the middle of living. There's really no way to bow out gracefully."

I knew that Marco had no idea how hard those words hit me, tried not to look wounded as I barked out a humorless laugh. "That's depressing."

A small, self-effacing smile played at the corners of his mouth, a muted glow compared to his usual grin's million-watt intensity. "Depression's a side effect of cancer."

"Bullshit," I said, ignoring the mildly offended look I got from our waitress as she sat our food down and walked off. "Depression is a side effect of dying."

"Everything is a side effect of dying, Jean," Marco pointed out, digging into his chicken marsala and raising an eyebrow. "Life's basically a very long, or sometimes not so long journey to death, so everything you do in life is a side effect of dying."

"Everything?" I asked.

"Everything. Depression, anger…" He paused for a long moment, looking very intently at the Metaphor Jar as its tacky decorations sparkled under the dim lighting in the restaurant. "Love. Everything."

I threw a piece of breadstick at him.

Marco jumped a little, his eyes narrowing. "How old are you?"

"Mentally, about nine years old. And I refuse to believe that love is a side effect of dying. I'm throwing food at you until you stop being even more of a cynical bastard than I am." I threw another piece of breadstick at him, which he batted out of the air before it could hit him square on the nose. "Love and dying aren't even on the same plane of existence. If anything, living is a side effect of love."

"Stop making a mess! And put a dollar in the jar, right now!"

"I will not!" I squawked in protest, flicking a cherry tomato off the top of the salad bowl at him. "You're the one who started this philosophical debate. It's unfair for you to charge me for speaking my side of the argument, Mr. 'Everything Is A Side Effect of Dying,' so you can take your fancy jar and shove it straight-"

"_Jean!"_

I dissolved into laughter, hunching forward in my seat, and Marco tried to hold back a smile before he started laughing as well, brushing garlic salt out of his hair and shaking his head. "I can't take you anywhere."

"Good thing I can take you places, then," I grinned, pulling a piece of folded paper out of my back pocket and tossing it on the table.

Marco frowned confusedly. "What's that?"

"Why don't you pick it up and see?"

Still looking at me warily, Marco reached forward and grabbed the paper, unfolding it slowly. I waited for the moment of realization to dawn on him as his eyes scrolled back and forth across the lines of print, but if anything he only looked more confused and a little heartbroken, setting the single sheet down carefully on the table and smoothing out the creases. "This is… I don't understand."

"It's a boarding pass," I said, a self-satisfied smile flashing across my face as I leaned forward and tapped the date printed on the paper. "For a plane flying out of O'Hare in three weeks' time, bound for Paris. The St. Rose Foundation was very generous. Four-star hotel, day passes to the Louvre, the whole nine yards. In addition, Hange Zoë has promised to organize a wonderful tour of the city for us, and we'll be meeting Levi Rivaille the day before we go home."

"Jean, I already told you that I can't-"

"But you can. That's the thing." I sat back in the booth, examining my nails nonchalantly. "I made a few calls, got your mother to lead the charge, and your doctor acquiesced to you going under the condition that someone who is familiar with your illness - namely your mother - goes with us to keep an eye on you. I've been informed that you already have a passport from a middle-school choir trip to Canada, and I have one from the family vacation to Cancun last year. The flight is arranged, the hotel is booked, and everything is accounted for. Pack your bags, Marco Bodt. You're going to Paris."

His mouth gaped open slightly as he looked down at the boarding pass, eyes glassy and swimming when he looked back up at me. "But I… you… why?"

I reached over and placed my hand over the one he had pressed against the paper, my smile softening to something with absolutely no plastic in it. "Because the world is not predisposed to handing out Wishes, Marco. But I am."

He laughed thickly, blinked a few times and maneuvered his hand around so that our fingers interlocked, giving my hand a short squeeze before letting go. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

We paid for dinner with the fifty from the Metaphor Jar and threw the change back in so that it jingled loudly against the glass when Marco picked it up and tucked it into a little elastic holster lashed around his oxygen tank. I laughed disbelievingly as we left the restaurant, pointing down at it. "You made a travel caddy for the Metaphor Jar?"

"Good thing, too," he nodded, waiting for me to unlock my car and folding himself into the passenger's seat. "I'll need to have some way to keep it on hand when we're in Paris."

"You're not taking that damn thing to Paris," I said flatly, putting my keys in the ignition.

"Oh, but I am."

"You _can't,_" I whined, gunning it out of the parking lot and lurching into traffic, steering one-handed long enough to find a cigarette and place it between my lips. "And fuck off, I don't have another fifty dollars to give you. But you _can't_ strip me of my metaphors, Marco. One does not have a deep conversation with Levi Rivaille and not use existential symbolism. You'd be telling me not to breathe and then charging a fee for every ragged gasp."

Marco rolled his eyes, reaching forward to fiddle with my stereo. "I'll let the cigarette slide because that chicken marsala was really good, but I want a dollar for the breathing bit. You're sitting next to a guy with lung cancer. Bad taste."

Was it bad taste if I had lung cancer too, even if mine was still so early-stage that I didn't notice it? Or maybe, I realized, I had noticed it. Had those hours curled up on my bed wheezing been panic attacks or flare-ups?

Seven months.

I took a deep breath just to make sure I still could, raising an eyebrow when a familiar guitar riff blasted through the speakers. "You're willingly listening to Panic! At the Disco?"

"I like their second album," he shrugged, leaning back in his seat.

"Yeah, well, you would. That's the one that they wrote in a cabin up in the mountains while smoking a metric ton of weed."

"I'll have you know that just because my parents are flower children doesn't mean _I've_ ever smoked weed," Marco huffed.

Cackling, I turned off on the street that led towards his neighborhood and reached down to crank up the volume. "Yeah, but you accidentally ate half a tray of pot brownies and spent your seventh birthday party stoned off your ass."

"I never told you that story!"

"No, but your mom did."

He groaned and buried his face in his hands. "You two are never allowed to be in a room together without me there to supervise you ever again."

I put my car in park in his driveway, waiting for him to get out and head for the front door, but he reached over and yanked my keys out of the ignition before hopping out of the passenger's seat, heading for the gate. "Come on."

I had to stop halfway back to through the garden to ride out a spike of pain up my leg and spine that almost sent me to the ground. Driving on Vicodin wasn't an option, and just to be safe because of how flaked out I got on pain meds, I hadn't taken any for the past twenty-four hours. Thankfully Marco had already gone back to the yard, leaving the hyacinths gently bobbing from the planter boxes in the breeze the sole witnesses to my clenched teeth and screwed-shut eyes.

After a minute, I walked back to find him lying in the grass near his back porch, staring intently upwards. It was an exceedingly clear night, stars practically blazing out of the sky, and I found that it was almost a reflex to look up now, stretching opposite from Marco, our heads next to each other but our feet pointing different directions.

"You know, half the stars we can see have been dead for thousands of years," he said.

"Yeah, but they're not really dead," I said.

Marco turned his head to the side to look at me, looking slightly irritated that I was questioning his knowledge of astronomy. "Yes they are. But they're so many lightyears away that we can still see them the way they were ten thousand years ago, so we won't stop seeing the light until-"

"They're not really dead, though," I insisted, turning to the side as well. Our noses brushed. Something warm settled in my stomach. "Because people can still see them. Their presence is still acknowledged somewhere in the universe. That's why people are obsessed with leaving legacies. Its our own brand of immortality. As long as you're a part of someone's constellation, you don't fully die."

Marco was quiet for a long time, his eyes searching as they met mine. He knew something was wrong. He might not have known what, and I had no intention of telling him, but he knew. After looking at me for a few more moments, he sighed and went back to stargazing. "Go put a dollar in the jar."

I pulled out my wallet and slipped a folded dollar bill into the Metaphor Jar, grumbling about my creativity being stifled. Marco smiled. I was suddenly much more interested in watching him than the stars. I thought of Eren in the minutes before he went back for surgery, looking frantically at me for that long, tense minute and trying to memorize, left with so little time to notice the things he'd taken for granted.

"You have freckles on your lips," I said.

Seven months.

The next day, six in the morning found me slumped in a chair in Memorial's Pediatric Oncology ward, a nurse fussing around with a tray of supplies and Eren sitting in the chair beside me.

"We were sitting in these exact chairs the day we met, you know," I said absently, eyes fixed on the seemingly innocent bag of clear liquid sitting on the tray. Chemotherapy isn't as complicated of a process as people make it seem. Your doctor figures out what amount of poison will kill you, and then dials that amount back slightly and orders you to let it drip into your veins for a week at a time. Simple in essence, utter hell in practice. I'd gotten over my fear of needles a long time ago, but looking at the IV made my stomach churn for an entirely different reason.

"No shit?" Eren laughed, pushing his Ray-Bans up on the bridge of his nose and looking more towards the nurse than towards me as he spoke. "I kicked your ass that day."

"You did," I admitted, remembering the black eye I'd brought home as a souvenir. Eren and I had gone to see a movie a week later.

"Okay, sweetie, hold still. You're gonna feel a little stick," the nurse said, sitting down and tapping at my arm to find a good vein.

Eren held out his hand, and I half expected him to make some half-assed Mama's Boy joke, but his expression was completely serious. "You and me, man, just like the old days."

I didn't express my gratitude in so many words, but with as much as Eren had been fixed on the sensation of touch lately, I was sure he felt it in the way I held onto his hand with an iron grip as I felt the first drops of poison hit my veins. "Yeah."

Eren kept talking, obviously trying to distract me. A few seconds in, and my body already felt sickeningly cold the way it usually had done a few hours into chemo when I'd had it before. He felt the shivers running down my arm and into my hand, frowned contemplatively and squeezed a little harder. "So are you just gonna shave your head this time, or wait and let nature take its course because you're a proud dumbass and would rather look like a dog with mange?"

"Actually, your dad says that my hair is safe. New drug, something in the formula that doesn't attack hair follicles," I shrugged, my teeth chattering. I didn't mention the supposedly gnarly side effects, which were starting to look less like hype and more like truth the colder I got. Thank God I had my own thermostat in my basement at home, I thought. I'd be at Memorial until four, after which they'd give me a bag of chemo as a take-home favor and I'd lay in bed for the rest of the day either puking my guts out or half-delirious or both. Back to Memorial the next day at six AM. And so on and so forth for a week.

"Huh. Well, I guess it's the small victories," Eren shrugged, his hands tracing the arms of his chair searchingly after I let go to grab the blanket the nurse offered me.

"I brought this too, honey," she said kindly, sitting a white plastic trash can down next to me.

"I'll be fine. I'll be home before I start feeling sick." At the hospital, they mixed anti-nausea drugs with the chemo. At home, there were pills for me to take, but if my previous experience was any indicator I wouldn't be able to get them down fast enough after my treatment to avoid throwing them right back up.

"Not with that stuff, you won't be," the nurse grimaced, nodding up at the bag that was dripping steadily down into the IV tube. "I can't believe they let it out of trials. You must really love your hair, kiddo."

"Well, that wasn't cryptic or anything," Eren snorted as she walked away. "Apparently bedside manner is something you have to pay extra for."

I laughed shakily, tucking the blanket up around my shoulders and trying to get comfortable. I was so cold that my muscles ached. "Right? Man, you should see how swanky it is at St. Rose. Donuts in the diagnostics lab waiting room. And not shitty Wal-Mart donuts, either, I'm talking Krispy Kremes."

Something was leaving a funny taste in my mouth, like hard water and pennies. I stopped talking about donuts.

"Oh man, I could go for a Krispy Kreme about now. I missed breakfast," Eren mumbled, feeling around for where he'd put his phone down and using some weird voice interface he'd installed on it to open Google. "Where is the nearest Krispy Kreme and/or Waffle House?"

"Eren…" I said warningly, the room starting to spin. The awful taste in my mouth grew stronger. I tried to flush it out with a swig from my water bottle, but even water tasted acrid and chemical. My hand looked white as a sheet when I sat the bottle down again. I didn't want to know what my face looked like.

"What? I'm not getting you sugary breakfast food, man, that'll be brutal later. Friends don't let friends eat donuts during chemo- hey, are you okay?"

Instead of answering him, I lunged forward, grabbed the trash can, and performed what I was pretty sure was a re-enactment of the really gross projectile vomiting scene in _The Exorcist_. My head didn't spin around three hundred and sixty degrees, but it was close enough. And it hurt, holy _fuck_ did it hurt, every muscle in my torso screaming from the exertion and my insides feeling like they were on fire in contrast to the ice under my skin. It seemed to go on forever and I was fairly certain that I hadn't eaten that much in the past _year,_ much less the past twelve hours, and by the time I was done I was shaking and absolutely refusing to admit that I was crying. A shaking hand grabbed for my water bottle so I could rinse out my mouth, but the water tasted so awful that it made me gag again, spitting the mouthful I had into the trash can and gasping in heaving breaths. Eren's hand was pressed between my shoulder blades, a deep frown carved into his face.

"Dude, I don't think your hair's worth this," he whispered.

"I'm fine," I croaked in response, shaking my head. "I'm fine. How long have I been on the drip?"

Eren leaned over and asked his phone what time it was, receiving a clipped, mechanical reply of _Six. Forty. Two. A. M._

Forty-two minutes. I'd lasted forty-two minutes.

In lieu of a reply, I groaned weakly and threw up again, already starting to think that death was a better option than this. I tried to hold onto something brighter to keep from thinking like that, because no one likes the little black raincloud in the chemo lab and it certainly wasn't going to make the time go any faster. I thought of postcards with the Eiffel tower on them, of a Grateful Dead t-shirt three sizes too big, the musty smell of koi pond water, the freckles on Marco's lips.

Every single cell of me hurt.

Seven months.


	11. Chapter 11

The rest of the week went about the same as that first day, although the only change was that I felt progressively worse. After the last day of my first cycle of chemo, I wasn't even capable of sitting up, lying in bed with every blanket in the house piled on top of me and watching _Star Trek _reruns with Eren. Well, I was watching, anyway. He was listening. Dad had helped both of us downstairs after we got home from the ten-hour stint at the hospital and rigged the drip bag up so that it hung from my now-vacant trophy shelf. I was too tired for it to feel like the home stretch, even though all I had left was half a bag of poison before two weeks of freedom and Paris.

I constantly thanked the God I didn't believe in that I'd been able to keep Marco removed from the situation. He'd been busy shopping for Paris, and we'd stuck to text messages throughout the week. Even that was hard; chemo had a habit of muddying the brain and making it hard to do things like read or concentrate on a television show for more than five minutes, but any strength I had left in me was best spent keeping up the charade, I decided, the effort of sending a two-sentence text often resulting in me sleeping for an hour. Eren spent most of his time with me in a display of solidarity, but I was aware that I wasn't ideal company, puking when I wasn't sleeping and so exhausted by conversation that it didn't seem worth trying.

"Dude, I don't know how you eat that shit," Eren shook his head when Mom came downstairs with the plate of watermelon slices that was considered my dinner.

"It's the only thing I _can_ eat without the thought of it making me want to hurl," I sighed wearily, taking a small nibble off the end of one slice before deciding that eating wasn't a good idea with how rocky my stomach felt and putting it back on the plate. "Watermelon's my chemo food. Everyone has one."

"Fair enough. Mine was ramen - shit, sorry," he amended too-late as the image of salty, congealed wads of noodles made me dry heave audibly. I'd instituted a firm "no talking about food" rule at the beginning of the week, which was hard for Eren, given that food was one of the three pillars of his existence along with shitty sci-fi shows and the study of creative profanity.

"S'fine," I croaked, slumping back into the stack of pillows behind me and staring blankly up at the ceiling. I'd just woken up about twenty minutes before, and I was already contemplating sleeping again.

Which, of course, meant that my phone had to choose that exact moment to start ringing. It took about five seconds of squinting at the screen for me to be able to read Marco's name, a hideous sinking feeling pulling at me as I swiped my thumb across the screen and tried to make myself sound like I wasn't half-dead. "Hey, what's up?"

"Just got back from clothes shopping with Mom," he said brightly, the crinkle of plastic bags in the background. "It's always fun taking someone who shops exclusively at Goodwill into H&amp;M."

"Did you buy a beret?" I laughed tiredly, unable to turn my head, eyes fixed on the bag hanging above me. Drip, drip, drip.

"Nah, I'm waiting until we get to Paris so I can buy an authentic one. I'm also going to get a striped shirt, a baguette, and a stick-on pencil mustache."

"Sexy."

Marco snickered, and I heard the sound of a door closing closely followed by soft strains of a Simon and Garfunkel song. He was in his room. "About as sexy as you sitting in your skivvies on my kitchen counter with algae in your hair. But hey, I've got nothing to do, can I come over and-"

"No!" I said hurriedly, sitting bolt upright in bed and getting slammed with a spinning wave of vertigo for my trouble. Biting back a groan, I settled down into bed again, more slowly this time. "I mean... not today. Sorry. Didn't mean to sound like a dick."

I could practically feel his incredulous look through the phone. "Jean?"

"I, uh... I've got the flu. Really bad," I muttered, glaring at Eren when his head whipped around even though he couldn't see it. "Believe me, man, you don't want this shit, it's brutal. Pretty sure it's just a forty-eight hour thing, though. I can hang out sometime later in the week."

"Oh, okay. Sorry you're not feeling well," Marco said, and in the background his door opened up. I could hear Karma saying something. "Yeah, Mom. Jean. No, he's got the flu. I was going to. Okay. Okay, I will. _Bye, _Mom."

"Hi, Karma," I said weakly, a small grin twitching at my lips.

"She says hi and feel better," Marco sighed. "And also, I'm supposed to tell you that my birthday is the day before we leave for Paris and ask you if you want to come over for the celebration at seven-thirty."

"I thought you said you hadn't had a birthday party since the pot brownie incident of '02," I said.

"It's not a party, really. Just my family. And you and Eren, if you guys want to come. I mean, it's not going to be Animal House or anything, but my mom's making cake."

I gagged, free hand groping for the trash can next to my bed. "Sounds awesome. I'll see you then if not before."

"Okay," Marco replied, voice soft. "Get some rest. You sound like you've been hit by a train."

"You got it, boss." I waited until I heard the line go dead before I leaned over and puked for the umpteenth time that day.

Eren's face was impassive when I looked up. "You told him you had the flu."

"Are you seriously gonna lecture me right now?" I croaked.

"I'm not lecturing you. I just..." Eren sighed, raking a hand through his hair. "Marco's my friend too, you know? We got really close while I was gone. He's nice and funny and generally just pretty fucking awesome among a lot of other things. But one thing he's _not_ is stupid, Jean, and he's going to find out."

"I know that!" I snapped as acidly as I possibly could, which, given how tired I was, wasn't very acidly at all. Even the effort of being an asshole exhausted me. My life was a sad thing. "I know that. I'm working on it."

"You told me that a week and a half ago."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't understand I was on a schedule," I lashed back, practically spitting the words. "How about I just walk up to Marco at his birthday party next week and tell him that I have cancer; that seems like a _great _time to do it."

"Don't make me the bad guy in this, Kirschtein, and I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't be such a condescending bastard to the guy that's been sitting here watching you puke for a week because he cares about your stupid ass!" Eren's face went from sad to angry in a millisecond, fists balling up in his lap. "I get it, okay?! It fucking _sucks_ telling people you love this sort of thing. I knew about the surgery for a month before I told Mikasa, and now I spend every goddamn day wishing I'd told her the moment I knew, because maybe if she'd had more time to come to terms with it she would have stayed. I just... I don't want that for you, man. You or Marco."

It was the first time I'd heard him say Mikasa's name in well over a month. I elected not to mention it, though; Eren was already worked up enough and I was too tired to continue the argument. So for what was possibly the first time, I did the unthinkable and admitted that he was right. "Okay. I hear you. But I'm not telling him at his birthday party, dude, that's sick. Speaking of which, you're invited."

"Yeah, I know, he called me yesterday."

"He invited you before me. What the actual fuck," I snorted, reaching over for my abandoned watermelon slice and taking a few careful bites. At that point I was feeling more hungry than sick, and I wasn't in the mood to hear Mom fuss if she came downstairs and saw that I hadn't eaten anything.

"Marco just takes his time when it comes to talking to you," Eren shrugged, pushing his sunglasses up on the bridge of his nose. "He wants to make sure he says the right thing or some unbearably sappy shit like that. Unlike you, he _dishes_, which is moderately unpleasant seeing as I really don't want to hear about how cute you are."

"He thinks I'm cute?"

"Dude. If you ever take your shirt off in that boy's presence again and I have to hear about it on the phone for an hour, I'll fucking kill you." His voice was surly, but he let a grudging smile slip out when he heard me laughing, his hand skittering over the pile of blankets on my bed until it found my arm. "But yeah, don't tell him at his birthday party. That's a dick move even for you. And sleep. You sound like you're about to pass out."

I tried to get a response out, but he'd been right. I was out before I could formulate even half of a joke about Eren secretly wanting to hear about my abs.

When I woke up, Eren was gone, there was a fresh glass of ice water on my bedside table, and the bag hanging over my head was empty. One cycle down, five to go.

The first week after chemo is usually spent easing back into normal activities. I didn't have that luxury. After two or three days of lounging and being able to walk further than the bathroom, I was up and about, buying things I needed for Paris and packing things I already had. The fact that neither of my parents knew that I was going yet - maybe I just had a thing about keeping important information to myself - made it a bit harder, especially since Mom was typically on me like white on rice the second I emerged from my room. Most days, I was able to get Eren to cover for me, but when three days to departure rolled around he called and fumed that he would no longer enable my evasive bullshit. Just as well, I told him. I'd already bought everything I needed to buy.

He hung up on me and didn't make any other efforts to speak to me until I pulled into his driveway to pick him up for Marco's party.

"You're a user and a liar and a bad, bad man, Jean Kirschtein," he hissed as soon as his mom helped him into the passenger seat.

"You know you only encourage me when you talk like that," I smirked, peeling out into the street and lurching towards the freeway. "Now hit me with your cane and tell me I've been naughty."

"I hate you!"

"Then get out of my car and walk to the party."

Eren squawked indignantly, "You'd kick a blind guy out on the street! You're just lending credence to my 'bad, bad man' theory, you fucker."

"I never claimed to be a good person," I snorted, merging into traffic and squinting against the early-evening sun. "Kind of takes away from the assumption that only the good die young, yeah?"

"You're not going to die, you melodramatic asshole," Eren sighed.

"Yeah," I laughed, glad he couldn't see what my face actually looked like. Yeah. There was a five percent chance that he was right.

We didn't say much else before I pulled into Marco's driveway. Eren had held his gift in his lap on the way over, sat not-so-patiently while I fished mine out of the trunk and helped him out, talking him up the driveway and the porch steps since he'd never been there before. He could navigate his house and my own without much help, could even tackle my basement stairs on his own if the situation called for it, but he was clumsier in unfamiliar territory, holding onto my arm with one hand and flailing his cane around with the other.

"Watch that thing; you're going to hurt somebody," I grumbled.

"Are you the only person in the immediate vicinity?" Eren asked.

"Yeah."

"Then that's the idea."

Marco opened the door to us bickering on his welcome mat, me shouting abuse and Eren brandishing his cane angrily. "Uh, hi?"

"Hi," I grinned, forgetting about Eren's existence in a second flat. Marco was dressed as smartly as usual, skinny jeans and a bark blue v-neck with some macramé creation his mother had probably made tied loosely around his neck, the amused smile stretching across his face putting the setting sun to shame. Still smiling stupidly, I held out the gift bag I'd recycled from my last birthday in his direction. "Happy Day of Legality. I hope you haven't gone out and bought cigarettes and porn and lottery tickets without us. It's an important rite of passage."

He laughed, standing aside so Eren and I could walk into the entry hall. "What am I going to do with cigarettes?"

"Give them to me. My last pack got mostly ruined in your koi pond. It's not actually _using_ the stuff that's the rite of passage, it's buying it," I shrugged, the beginnings of a smirk twitching at my mouth. "Why aren't you questioning the lottery tickets? Or the porn? Gonna use those?"

"Oh my God, shut up," Marco said, flushing brightly, although there was no real bite to the words.

"Is that them?" Karma's voice floated back from the kitchen along with the smell of baking confections. I was glad that I was mostly past feeling sick. All I had to do was be careful of how much I ate, a lesson learned after a hellish night that was the result of gorging on pizza with Eren a week after I'd finished my first cycle.

"No, it's Jean and Eren," Marco called back, raking a hand through his hair as he turned back to us. "You guys are kind of early; we thought you were my sister and her boyfriend."

I blinked. "Wait, hold up, you have a sister?"

"Half-sister," he shrugged, looking like I was weird for being surprised. "Mom called her when I was in the ICU. Were you not there for that?"

Oh, no, I must have been upstairs in the diagnostics lab finding out that I had cancer. Again. "Must have been while I was napping. Still, half-sister?"

"Yeah, she's five years older than me. Mom was married for a brief stint in college. They divorced when she was like two and Mom married Dad a year later. She hasn't lived with us in like three years, so it's not like you'd have seen her around."

Still, the fact that I'd managed to miss out on her existence bothered me. If she was coming to Marco's birthday party, that meant that she wasn't the black sheep of the family or anything, and Marco smiled when he talked about her, so she had to have been on good terms with the rest of the family. Why had I not found out about her before, seen her in-

Oh.

I realized as I looked around the Bodts' entry hall that there were no family pictures anywhere, and when I thought about it, I realized that there weren't any in the rest of the house either. It didn't take much of a deduction process to figure out why. It was the same reason that I was debating tearing down all my school portraits and soccer pictures from the walls of my house. With a terminal diagnosis comes a certain sense of duty to the ones you're leaving behind. You don't want the people you love to have to see you staring at them from every direction after you're gone.

"You should open your presents," I said, trying to shake off the heaviness that had settled suddenly upon my shoulders.

Marco mumbled something about me being an impatient heathen for thinking that presents before cake was an acceptable practice, but he sat down on one of the floor pillows in the living room and opened his present from Eren anyway, squinting down into the bag. "Mass Effect?"

"You'll like it. Lots of moral dilemmas and shit," Eren shrugged, leaning against the wall and mapping out the edges of the archway that led to the kitchen with his fingers.

"Dude, this is cool, but I don't even have a gaming system. I suck at video games."

"You can have my Xbox. Not like I can use it anymore."

I laughed. Marco gave me a reproachful glare before reaching into the gift bag I'd handed him, pulling out one of the three things inside. "An English-to-French dictionary. Very nice."

"Or as they say over there, _très bon,_" I said smoothly, waving at him to continue. "There's other stuff in there too, go on."

"Impatient," he chided again, folding up the tissue paper and setting it aside. "Oh, sweet, _Invisible Monsters_, I've been wanting to read this one! Thank you! And… oh my _God,_ Jean."

In the very bottom of a bag was a ceramic piggy bank that I'd painted up to customize it, adding a mop of blonde hair and an unlit cigarette dangling from its mouth. Marco started cackling, and I just smiled so widely that my cheeks began to ache. "For when the Metaphor Jar inevitably gets too full. I present to you Kirschtein Savings and Loan, where it doesn't matter how much money is actually in the bank because it's about the symbolism of putting it there."

"You're an absolute _dweeb,_" he wheezed, clutching his stomach, but the sound of an engine rumbling up the driveway made him raise his head. "Mom, they're here!"

"Ah, the mysterious sister. What's she like?" I asked, falling into step beside Marco as he headed for the front door.

"Well, you know how I told you that my parents sold their Volkswagen bus?" He said, swinging the door open and leading me out onto the porch so I could see a massive yellow landwhale of a vehicle pulling up the driveway. "They sold it to her."

The engine of the bus shut off with a rattle, and out of the driver's side jumped a pretty young woman with long, chestnut-colored hair and dark eyes. There was a slight similarity to the slender build of their bodies, a faint connection in the shape of their faces, but all of her resemblance to Marco stopped there. She looked like she had just walked off the stage at a Fleetwood Mac concert, peasant blouse hanging off her shoulders and a gauzy skirt tangling around her legs as her bare feet hit the driveway. A similarly-hippie-esque guy with a buzz cut, cargo shorts, a tie-dyed shirt, and Birkenstock sandals climbed out of the passenger side, but she was already running up the porch steps with a mile-wide grin.

"Marcoooooooo!" She practically sang, throwing her arms around him and squeezing so tightly that one side of his oxygen tube slipped out from behind his ear and hung haphazardly in the air. "Happy birthday, baby brother!"

"Hey, Sasha," he choked out, patting her awkwardly on the back until she let go. By that time, buzz cut guy had made his way up to the porch as well, and their greeting was much less emphatic, a simple handshake and shared, knowing smiles as Marco tucked his disgruntled tubing back into place. "How's it going, Connie?"

"I've been riding shotgun with your sister driving since Boise," the boyfriend now identified as Connie snorted, reaching into his backpack and pulling out an unlabeled glass bottle that he passed to Marco with a conspiratorial grin. "Which is why I believe no one will fault me for asking you to share this. Happy birthday, dude."

Marco unscrewed the cap and took a small sniff, recoiling instantly. "God, what _is_ this?"

"Moonshine," Connie, answered excitedly, rubbing his hands together. "We know a guy in Kansas who makes it. We're getting you shwasted, little man."

Marco laughed a little nervously, screwing the cap back onto the bottle and ushering them inside. Sasha practically sprinted down the hallway into Karma's arms, both of them babbling excitedly as they made their way back into the kitchen. Eren was still in the living room, looking vaguely confused as Marco, Connie, and I came back in to sit with him.

"Sasha and Connie kind of live in the bus," Marco explained, setting the bottle of moonshine on the coffee table and curling up on the floor pillow beside me. "They've got a… she doesn't like calling it a band."

"It's a folk music experience," Connie deadpanned, and the rest of us laughed. I went ahead and decided that I liked him. "We book gigs online, drive back and forth. Modern-day minstrels. It's pretty sweet."

We all sat around and talked until Karma called us into the kitchen. It was a pretty standard birthday party from there. Cake, ice cream, singing. No pot brownies. Eren loudly demanded a corner piece of cake, and I was able to convince Marco to wear one of those stupid paper party hats for long enough to take a quick selfie with me, setting it as my phone background when he wasn't looking. The hours wore on, and the party migrated back to the living room where Connie cracked open the bottle of moonshine. Marco's parents didn't seem to mind, which didn't surprise me, Belgian hippies and whatnot, mentioned that they'd be downstairs in the rec room if anyone needed anything.

"Jean, dude, you should come get in on this," Connie waved me over, pouring what seemed to be an excessive amount of the stuff into a plastic cup along with half a can of Redbull.

I shook my head, trying to decline politely. At least half of the fistful of pills I took every day had a little martini glass with a slash through it on the label. "No can do. I've got to drive Eren's drunk ass home, followed by my sober one. Some other time."

I sat nearby and watched as the three of them started in on some drinking game involving playing cards that I couldn't really keep up with other than realizing that Marco was losing spectacularly, two drinks in before anyone else had even finished half of theirs with a steady pink flush starting to settle across his face. He looked over at me and smiled brightly waggling his fingers in a little wave. I grinned softly and waved back, trying not to notice how bright his eyes were.

"So, designated drivers unite, huh?" Sasha said from behind me, making me jump a little.

I jumped a little and looked back at her, nodding. "Yeah, guess so."

"Well, they'll be at it for hours. Connie doesn't like leaving a bottle of liquor unfinished, and I'm pretty sure it's his goal to have Marco dancing on a table before the party's over," she said. She had a nice, musical laugh, and that was a resemblance to Marco that I hadn't noticed yet. "So, uh, tell me if you're not up for it or whatever, but I can't… _indulge_ with baby brother in the house. Would you like to accompany me elsewhere?"

"Indulge?" I asked, confused until I wasn't. Eyebrows raising, I looked over at Sasha and made pantomimed smoking with a questioning look, to which she nodded. I mulled it over for a moment. Across the room, Marco giggled and reached forward to take another drink, Eren and Connie cheering him on. I'd heard fascinating things about how good medical marijuana was for cancer patients. "Yeah, why the hell not?"

She led me upstairs and through a door at the end of the hall that led to a narrow, rickety staircase up to the attic. The house had a flat roof, and an access shaft was placed in the middle of the attic with a pulldown ladder that I had a hell of a time getting up with my leg, exhausted by the time I finally clawed my way up and slumped beside Sasha, watching the last thin rays of sunshine seep into twilight.

Sasha was really fucking cool, I decided the better part of an hour later, passing a joint back and forth and silently musing that it was a really good thing I'd spent so much time fake-smoking because it made the real thing a lot easier. A pleasant, light buzz was filling up my head, the stars coming out seeming all the brighter as we sat there and shot the shit about everything from music to movies to how the hell one managed to live in a Volkswagen bus, laughing at nothing.

"I'm very in love with your brother," I finally said, exhaling a cloud of heavy-scented smoke upwards and coughing a little.

"Well yeah," said Sasha, her eyebrows furrowing as she looked over at me. "That'd be why you guys are together, right?"

"We're not together," I shook my head, passing the joint back over to her. "And you can finish that off, by the way, I'm good."

"No shit," she snorted, shaking her head. "Well, that's dumb. You're in love with him, he's in love with you-"

"No he's not."

"_Please,_" she drawled, an orange pinprick of light blazing from her lips before she ground out what was left of the joint on the roof tiles. "I've been watching Marco fall in love with things since he was five years old and picked up a book for the first time. I know the look."

Something pervasive and tingly settled in my stomach, but I couldn't tell if it was from the high or from what Sasha had said. We got up and headed back downstairs into an utter three-ring circus, Connie sitting in the bay window with a lampshade on his head while Eren was howling with laughter at something. Marco perked up when he saw me and waved wildly, a big, sloppy grin stretching across his face. "Jean!"

"No, _no,_" Eren said emphatically, feeling around for Marco's shoulder. "I was tellin' you, f'you say his name a certain way he'll do _whatever you want._ You have to give him your best puppy-dog eyes and go 'Jeaaaaaan.' Try it."

Marco laughed. "Hey, Jean, c'mere."

"Oh sweet mother of fuck," I sighed, wishing I could be a bit higher in order to deal with drunk Eren and drunk Marco in the same room.

An evil grin curled at the edges of his lips, voice lilting down a half-octave as he leaned over the coffee table. "Jeaaaaaan."

I was over there in a second flat.

Marco swayed to his feet, oxygen lines slanting crookedly across his flushed cheeks as he reached out and grabbed my shoulders to steady himself, looking at me intently. "Jean. Jean, you have to promise me something."

"Anything," I said. He wouldn't remember this tomorrow.

"I want… I wan' you to _promise me_ that you aren't taking me to Paris just to get laid. B'cause that's what Eren said." His eyes were wide and hurt-looking, like a little kid with stolen candy or a kicked puppy.

"I promise you that Eren is an idiot and I'm not taking you to Paris just to get laid," I said placatingly, smoothing his rumpled hair down and smiling. "I've accepted the fact that I'm probably going to die a virgin."

Marco's jaw dropped almost comically. "You're a _virgin?_"

"Well, yeah," I said, trying to bite back a laugh at his disbelieving look. "Trost doesn't have the most thriving gay scene, dude. I've never even dated anyone seriously. You look surprised."

"I'm surprised! I mean, look at you! You're like… Fight Club Brad Pitt or something."

And that was it. I burst out laughing, which made Marco look a little offended, pouting at me even though his hands still hadn't left my shoulders. "I wouldn't go that far. I'm gorgeous, but no one is Brad Pitt Gorgeous except for Brad Pitt. Anyway, I promise you that your virtue is safe. I should probably take Eren home and get to bed. Big day tomorrow."

At some point, Connie and Sasha had cleared out. Eren was facing into the far corner of the living room giggling at nothing. Marco smiled in a way that made every light in the room blaze brighter, the bitter veneer of alcohol clinging to his lips as he leaned down a little closer. "I think you're Brad Pitt Gorgeous."

"You're gonna be _so_ hungover for that 8AM flight tomorrow," I laughed, taking a step back. It might have been what I wanted, but that wasn't the manner in which I wanted it. I walked over and hauled Eren to his feet, throwing his arm around my shoulders and all but dragging him, protesting loudly the whole way, to my car.

Marco followed at a distance, tapping my shoulder when I'd gotten Eren all strapped in and frowning when I turned around to look at him. "Hey. Are you mad at me?"

"No, sweetheart, I'm not mad at you," I laughed softly, the endearment slipping between my lips like the plumes of smoke had minutes ago, inhibitions loosened. I wanted to regret it. I couldn't.

"It's just… you've been acting really weird lately, and I thought you were mad at me. I don't want you to be mad at me 'cause I like when you smile at me. You've got a really nice smile, Jean. That makes no sense."

"It makes enough sense," I said, a slow grin stretching across my face. Not really thinking about it, I pressed my hand to the nape of Marco's neck and pulled him down so that I could rise up on my toes and press my lips fleetingly to his forehead, pressing my other palm to his alcohol-heated cheek. "Happy birthday, Marco. Now go sleep that off, you big dork. Drink lots of water. Take an ibuprofen. And for heaven's sake, get your mother to help you out with your BiPAP. Don't try to set that shit up by yourself drunk."

"Okay," Marco said dreamily, wandering back into the house.

I drove Eren home and left him in his living room for his mother to deal with, drove back to my house and stripped out of my clothes before Mom had time to smell weed on them, laid in bed for hours and hours feeling a tingling heat across my lips even after the high was long gone.

Sasha had said that she knew the look of Marco falling in love with something. Maybe I'd seen that look, I realized. The idea of it excited and terrified me. I wanted him to look at me like that again, wide-eyed and beautiful, but I'd also gotten to the point where every heartbeat sounded like _seven months, seven months, seven months._

At least supernovas weren't conscious of the destruction they caused. That part of the human condition wasn't present in the metaphor.


	12. Chapter 12

It was only when I found myself with my suitcase in hand sneaking into the kitchen at five in the morning and taping a note to the fridge telling my parents that I'd be in Paris for the next four days that I realized I might possibly have a slight problem with evasiveness.

I'd packed light, cramming all of my clothes and toiletries into a relatively small suitcase and everything else into my backpack. There wouldn't be much room for souvenirs, but I wasn't really planning on buying anything other than a pack of French cigarettes and some horrifyingly tacky present for Eren. My copy of _The Infinity Vault_ was tucked safely into my backpack's front pocket. Someone had already signed the title page, but I couldn't think of anything better than Levi Rivaille's signature right underneath Marco's phone number. Hange Zoë had sent me an email the night before confirming the date and time of our visit, as well as telling me the address - 12 Rue Saint-Jean. I'd laughed for about ten minutes straight.

As I padded quietly back to the table to pick up my things, I thought about what Eren had told me a few days previously, that he'd no longer enable my evasive bullshit. A victorious smirk settled on my lips. Who needed his enabling anyway?

The light clicked on. "Jean?"

"Shit," I whispered, turning around slowly with a look of utter horror on my face.

"The sun's not even up, sweetie, what are you doing?" Mom said, looking bleary and tired until she saw the suitcase in my hand. "Where are you going?"

Well, too late to lie now. "Paris."

She laughed, shaking her head and walking over to the counter to turn the coffee maker on. "Uh-huh. You know, if you're going to Eren's for the weekend all you have to do is tell me."

A horrible, acidic feeling pressed at the lining of my throat, and trying to swallow it down only made it worse. "No, I'm actually going to Paris for four days with Marco and his mom. I called in my Wish."

Mom went very quiet, setting her coffee cup down with a ceramic click and looking over at me with her lips pressed into a thin line. I knew that look. That look meant Very Bad Things were about to happen and that I had about ten seconds to either apologize or run. When she spoke, though, her voice was deceptively calm. "And you're just now telling me this?"

"Actually, I was planning on leaving you a note."

"This isn't funny, Jean!" she snapped, tearing the note off the fridge and glancing over it. "You can't just up and fly off to Paris. You have treatment next week."

"I already talked to Dr. Jaeger; he said we could push it back a week." Unlike my parents, Dr. Jaeger knew that a week here or there probably wouldn't make a difference in the long run.

"You're willing to risk that for a vacation?! Absolutely not!"

"All due respect, Mother, but you technically can't stop me," I said flatly, trying to bite back the hot bloom of anger that was spreading through my chest. "None of the travel documents are in your name, you haven't financed any part of this trip, and I am legally an adult."

"You're being absolutely ridiculous!" she lashed back, shaking her head and walking towards the hallway. "Maybe your father can talk some sense into you, because-"

"Don't bother waking him up," I said, cutting her off. "I'm going, and I'm fully within my rights to go."

Mom looked like she was about to cry, which made me angrier rather than remorseful, the small part of me that was a decent human being completely overridden by my selfish motivations. Weeks and weeks of plastic smiles, of me pushing myself through how many mental breakdowns for the sake of seeming like I was okay, and _she_ was the one blubbering in the middle of the kitchen. "Why are you insisting on playing around with something as important as your life, Jean?"

"BECAUSE IT'S _MY LIFE._" Just like that, the floodgates broke, accusation bloodying my consonants like the final charge of a battle. There would be no more plastic smiles from me. No more false optimism. Keeping up that front for Marco was hard enough on its own, and a vicious, hateful part of me came to a conclusion in that moment that my parents no longer deserved me breaking my back and heart to try to sugar-coat cancer for them. "It's _my life,_ Mom, and it's ending one minute at a time! And all I want to do before that is just go to Paris with this beautiful boy I care far too much about and find out the end of this _stupid_ book, so can you just do me a favor and indulge me for once?! I get it; you're upset because the only thing you've been for eighteen years is my mom and now I'm screwing up your career path by dying, but maybe you could stand to get some _goddamn_ perspective for a moment and realize that this is hard for me too!"

My throat was raw and aching by the time I was finished, fists clenched so hard at my sides that my fingernails dug violent half-moons into my palms. Instead of trying to defend herself, Mom just broke down into tears, sitting at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. And there I stood, the bad guy. I was so worked up that I couldn't even care, shouldering my backpack again when I saw Karma's minivan pull into our driveway. "Ground me for the rest of my life when I get home. I don't care. I'll be back in four days. Consider it a trial run for functioning in an existence where you have to find something to do besides fuss over me."

Dad reached the bottom of the stairs just as I made it to the front door. "I heard yelling. What's going on down here?"

"I'm making grand metaphorical gestures and Mom's crying. The usual," I replied curtly, swinging the door open. "I'm going to Paris. See you in four days."

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a Marlboro Red that I let hang from the corner of my mouth on the way down to the van. Marco was passed out in the backseat, clearly hungover and groaning softly when I shut the door, and Karma had her eyes on the road for most of the drive to Chicago.

Good. I wasn't sure how well I could hold up a plastic smile at the moment, every mile growing between me and the house where I'd shouted my mother to tears sinking in my stomach like a rock.

I called her to apologize before we got on the plane, hovering over a sink in an airport bathroom and trying to juggle my phone in one hand and my rainbow fistful of medication in the other. Marco and Karma thought I was at McDonald's getting breakfast. I was afraid to eat anything with the dangerous combination of my stomach's leftover chemo unsteadiness and the fact that I got horribly motion-sick in planes. The result of the conversation was that I was sorry, so was she, and that my grounding sentence was anywhere from one week to life with possibility of parole after I got back. As angry as I'd been, as tired as I still was, I'd broken the cardinal ordinance of the Cancer Kid Code - never make your pairents cry. That put me in the wrong. Admitting it left a sour taste in my mouth but took a little bit of weight off my shoulders.

The walk back to the gate took most of my low reserves of energy, fatigue tugging at my limbs by the time I settled into a seat next to Marco, who was still barely-conscious and nursing a cup of coffee. I had to try three or four times to muster up a plastic smile that stuck for more than a second. "How's the hangover?"

"Never again," he groaned, fiddling with the handle of his oxygen tank cart, the usual cannister replaced with one from the airline. "You were at McDonald's for a long time. And where's your food?"

"Ate it on the way back." It was frightening how smoothly the lie rolled off my tongue. I understood that lying to Marco was a necessity, but I wanted it to _hurt,_ wanted it to feel wrong and set my teeth on edge. That spoke of some sort of emotional masochism, but I wasn't awake enough to fully process it. There was usually a one-or-two-hour crash after I took my meds, and that was made worse by the fact I'd knocked back some motion sickness pills along with the typical cocktail. Marco looked too hungover to question it, looking over at me with a sleepy smile that sat endearingly on his lips. Against my better judgement, I thought of how the moonshine had clung to them the night before, hovering an inch from mine with the space between us laced with could-have-beens.

"Do you even remember anything that happened last night?" I asked suddenly, hands knotting together in my lap.

"I think…" Marco said contemplatively, rubbing at his forehead as we stood up to board the plane. "I think the last thing I remember was you going to get high with my sister."

So I'd been right. He didn't remember the way his hands had rested on the curve of my shoulders, the way he'd smiled when I promised him anything. It was for the best. I still felt achy and heartsick. I nodded, forcing out a laugh. "Not much else happened after that. I took Eren home around eleven."

"Did you?" he asked, walking through the gate ahead of me and turning around to raise an eyebrow as we funneled into the narrow fuselage of the plane. The St. Rose Foundation hadn't been generous enough to pay for first class tickets. "Because I thought I remembered talking to you on the driveway at like-"

"Nah, man, you were sprawled out on the couch when I left," I shook my head, tossing my backpack in the overhead compartment and settling into my seat beside the window. Marco was in the middle, sandwiched between me and Karma, who spent so much time checking his oxygen tank and fussing over stuff in her carryon that a stewardess had to come ask her to sit down so we could take off.

I paid very close attention to the emergency procedures, double checked that my seatbelt worked. Marco didn't notice how the color had drained from my face until we started to taxi, his head tilting to the side. "You okay?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine," I croaked, swallowing hard. "I'm just sitting in a metal tube hurtling down a strip of tarmac until it flies, about to be suspended over the Atlantic for nine hours. I'm not terrified of flying or anything."

He laughed softly, reached down and grabbed my hand as the plane started to lift off the ground, and I wasn't strong enough to not cling back like he was my safety net, eyes screwed shut and breaths heavy.

We were at cruising altitude before I let go, settling back in my seat and sighing shakily. "Okay. Okay, I'm good."

"Maybe you should just sleep through it," Marco offered, frowning a little. "Mom's got sleeping pills to help with the jet lag."

"Nah, I'm already strung out on half a pack of Dramamine so I don't have to utilize those cute little air sick bags," I shook my head, neglecting to mention all the other pills that were entering my bloodstream as my eyes started to grow heavy. Marco laughed and said something, but it was muddy and unintelligible, sleep pulling me mercifully down.

When I woke up, the wheels were skidding down a runway in Paris and my head was resting on Marco's shoulder. I blinked blearily and went to rub my eyes, but the hand that came up to accomplish the task was tangled up with his, fingers twined together in a complicated braid. Something swelled in my chest. Marco had fallen asleep as well sometime during the flight, mumbled something unintelligible and curled into me as I tried to pull away. Mouth moving soundlessly, I looked over at Karma with a pleading expression. I couldn't wake him up, not when I had this, not when I could feel the warmth of his skin through the fabric of my shirt and his breath in slow, hot washes against the crook of my neck. If left to my own devices, we'd never get off the plane; I'd let Paris and Levi Rivaille slip through my fingers and sit in those uncomfortable coach seats in an aircraft that terrified me with Marco sleeping soundly on my shoulder all the way back to Chicago.

She seemed to understand, placed a hand on his shoulder and shook him lightly. "Honey, wake up, we're here."

He stirred with a confused mumble, squinting blearily at her for a second before realizing what was going on and quickly untangling himself from me, a dark blush settling across his cheekbones. I felt the absence all the way down to the core of me. It resonated to the marrow of my diseased bones as we disembarked and went through customs and hailed a taxi outside the airport. It spread out under my skin like frost on a windowpane as he sat a careful distance away throughout the taxi ride, insisted on hauling his own bags and refusing my help when we got to the hotel. It consumed me entirely when he let the door of his and Karma's room click shut behind him without so much as a "good night," leaving me set adrift in the garishly-carpeted hallway. My room was next door, not so much for propriety's sake as for the fact that both Marco and Karma insisted that I'd never be able to sleep in the same room as him with the BiPAP machine running full-force. I could hear its mechanical whoosh through the wall, setting out a slow, even metronome to me throwing my suitcase on the bed to dig out my pajamas and get ready to go to sleep. PJs on. Leg off. Another handful of pills down the hatch. I lay awake in bed for far longer than I should have, thinking about the look on Marco's face as he'd pulled away from me.

The action had hurt him as much as it hurt me. There was no comfort in that.

The next day came far too early, jet lag hitting me full-force when my alarm went off at 8:30 Parisian time, ending whatever fitful amount of sleep I'd gotten. Even the effort of getting dressed exhausted me, and I found myself thinking as I tugged a white v-neck over my head and pulled on one of my old first-round-of-chemo beanies that I'd be dead on my feet after walking around the Louvre for the rest of the day.

One minute of self-allowed rest. Fistful of pills. Plastic smile. Downstairs for breakfast.

Marco and his mom were already halfway through a plate of croissants by the time I got down to the small patio where they were serving continental breakfast, Karma grinning around a mouthful and waving at me when I ducked out the door. "Morning, sleepyhead!"

"Hey," I grinned, sitting down and grabbing a croissant for myself. I took a cautious nibble before eating half the thing in another massive bite, making an obscenely satisfied sound. "Okay, I'm taking some of these home."

"They'll go stale," Marco pointed out.

"Let me dream," I grumbled, mouth full. "You would find a way to be pessimistic when we're sitting in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower eating fresh French food. _Tu es un _buzzkill. I didn't think the forecast called for rainclouds this week."

"Euro in the jar, Jean."

"Joke's on you, Bodt, I haven't gotten my money switched yet."

Marco's face split into a grin across the table, and it let me feel something other than the previous night's absence, the distance between us closing in a metaphorical sense if not physically. His hand brushed mine as we stood up and went outside to hunt down the Metro station. It was enough. I'd never ridden a subway before, found something charming in the dirty station and the rickety sway of the train even though Marco looked like he was afraid of touching anything with his bare skin, shifting nervously until we were back on the street above.

"You okay?" I asked, squinting against the sunlight and taking a step closer to him as we waited to cross the street, Karma floating around a few yards back looking at something on a street vendor's cart.

He nodded curtly, fiddling with his oxygen lines and avoiding my eyes. "I just… don't like being underground. Your basement would creep me out if it didn't have that sliding door."

"It's because you love the sky so much," I said sagely, looking at the map I'd bought at the airport and trying to figure out which way we had to turn to get to the Louvre. "You don't like being so far removed from something you love. That's a pretty typical human reaction."

"You know I'm keeping a tab until you cash your traveler's check. Two Euros."

I laughed, but Marco still looked a little peaky as we navigated through the human traffic. He was quiet for the next few blocks, waiting until Karma was out of earshot before he said, "It's more because whenever I'm underground I become acutely aware of how one day I'll be taking up permanent residence there. It's not as romantic as you're making it out to be."

I folded up the map and smacked him upside the back of the head with it.

"Ow! What the hell, Jean!"

"I don't have a Pessimism Jar for you, so you get a smack every time you rain on your own parade," I shrugged, stopping at the next corner and making a sweeping gesture at our surroundings. "We are in _Paris,_ Marco. The city of lights. The city of love and good wine and all that is beautiful in the world. We are on our way to the most prolific art museum to ever exist. _We are meeting Levi Rivaille tomorrow. _You're not allowed to talk about human mortality as we walk on some of the most immortal streets mankind has ever built. Revolutionaries shed blood on these stones, man, have you never seen _Les Misérables_?"

"I read the book my freshman year," Marco said, looking unimpressed by my speech. "And this sidewalk is five years old at most."

"I'm not talking about the actual street, you nincompoop! I'm making a - dammit."

"Three Euros."

I grumbled the rest of the way up the street, finally giving up on the map and turning to the guy running a newsstand on the corner with a bright smile. _"Excusez-moi, pourriez-vous s'il vous plâit nous dire dans quelle direction est le Louvre?"_

Marco gaped at me as the guy smiled and nodded and pointed down the street to our left. "You speak French?"

"_Un peu,"_ I grinned cheekily, holding up pinched fingers to get across what my response meant. "My name is Jean, for fuck's sake. What do you think my heritage is, Nigerian? I'm among my countrymen, Marco. I'm going to use the local lingo."

"Or you could be doing it to show off and lying about the fact that you bought Rosetta Stone two weeks ago," he snorted. I smacked him with the map again.

"I'll have you know I'm in level four French at school," I huffed, checking over my shoulder to make sure Karma hadn't gotten distracted and run off. The fact that we practically needed a kid leash for Marco's mother made a grin twitch at the edges of my irritated expression, and I was laughing slightly as we made it to the end of the street, the famous glass pyramid in front of the Louvre peeking up from above the surrounding infrastructure. Grinning like an idiot, I turned around and pointed wildly at the museum, digging around in my pocket for the day passes that the St. Rose Foundation had provided us. "There it is. There it _is,_ holy shit."

I'd read somewhere that if you were to look at every piece in the Louvre for thirty seconds with no breaks, it would take over a hundred days to see them all. As it stood, Marco could walk around for maybe three hours maximum before he was exhausted, and my window of being able to move without my leg completely incapacitating me wasn't much longer. We only had time for a cursory glance. That said, my not-so-inner art nerd was caught up in one long, extended orgasm from the moment we walked through the door, waving a hasty goodbye to Karma, who had forgone her day pass in favor of going to poke around Montmartre and experience the city's Bohemian culture. Marco was smiling a little bemusedly, but I was grinning so wide that my entire face ached, practically shaking with excitement.

"Dude, that's the _Venus de Milo._ That's _the_ fucking _Venus de Milo_," I laughed disbelievingly as we wound our way through the Greek Antiquities wing, walking around the sculpture and shaking my head. "Marco, come over here and check this out. Baby got back."

"Are you sure you're gay? I think you're getting a boner for the armless rock-lady," he deadpanned, slipping into a small smirk as he reached over to grab my arm and tug me towards the end of the wing. "Hurry up. We can always come back; I want to see it before all the crowds get here."

It felt like the worst sort of crime, walking past all of those paintings and sculptures and not taking the time to stop and look at every one of them, one hundred days be damned. But Marco was relentless, rolling his eyes and stubbornly pulling me along every time I stopped to look at something. Into an elevator, up one floor, across a beautiful rotunda and through more galleries of gorgeous art that I couldn't stop to admire, and finally into a small room with a statue of Diana the Huntress in the center. I stopped to look over it, remembering Marco's story about Orion and how he had bested Diana with a bow, earning his place in the stars. "You know, I bet there's a lot of constellations in here if we'd stop to look-"

"There she is."

I turned around to see what he was talking about, a soft, soundless 'oh' settling on my lips. The motion of walking over to stand beside him was almost reverent, my footsteps bouncing off the empty gallery, abandoned at ten in the morning on a Wednesday. The Mona Lisa watched us draw closer, her enigmatic smile never wavering.

"It's smaller than I thought it would be," Marco said, his head tilting to the side. The painting itself was maybe three feet by two feet, the aged lacquer darker and dingier than the enhanced textbook versions made it out to be.

"That's the thing about legacies," I said after a beat, eyes locked on the painting. "It doesn't matter how small they start. The really important things have a habit of growing to their full potential over time. This thing's been stolen, smuggled, hidden in basements, toured around the world, and now it's hanging here, the most famous piece of art ever."

When the final, undeniable realization finally came, it hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest, a long stretch of quiet passing as I turned away from the painting and looked at Marco instead. "And I am in love with you."

Marco's head snapped to the side, his expression guarded, eyes warning. "Jean…"

"No. I am in love with you. _Je suis en amour avec toi. _I am in love with you. It's universally true in every language and every form of expression that has ever existed, and I will say it as many times as it takes to get it across to you. I am in love with you," I said stubbornly, my chest tightening in a way that wasn't altogether unpleasant. "And I'm not saying that I'm in love with you as an accusation, or with an expectation for you to reciprocate. I'm stating it as a simple fact. There are a million Oblivions up in the sky right now, Marco, and it would be an insult to all those worlds of wasted potential burning away to dust to go another day without telling you irrefutably that I am in love with you."

A million Oblivions, and chief among them was my own. My brain had been screaming _tell him, tell him, tell him_ for weeks, and it wasn't until that moment that I realized maybe I had misinterpreted my own message. Marco knew enough about cancer. There was nothing he needed to be told about in that field of knowledge. What he needed to know was that a person existed who loved him up to and past the point of a physical ache, something greater than the love that whatever ancient deities had for their favorites immortalized in the stars, greater than algorithms and unsolvable puzzles and heroic causes.

I loved him with every single beat of my supernova heart, and even if I loved alone, it was enough for me. It was something so real that I couldn't cover it with a plastic smile and convenient lies. For the first time, I had something that was more real than my body betraying itself, more real than the chemo and the handful of pills, more real than seven months. That reality was enough.

He was quiet for a very long time, his face impassive even though I could see something almost like panic in his eyes before whatever willpower there was in him stomped it down and he swallowed hard, nodding once. "Okay."

"Okay?" I asked.

"Okay," Marco whispered, blinking hurriedly and walking away from the Mona Lisa, mumbling something about wanting to see the Winged Victory of Samothrace before we left. A slow smile settled on my face, more real than the pain radiating up my leg. As we walked through the hallways, I heard him mutter it again to himself like an affirmation. "Okay."

It was enough.


	13. Chapter 13

"Dude, you're gonna give yourself an aneurysm. Calm down."

"I'm calm."

"Did I miss the memo where they changed the definition of 'calm' to 'looking like one is about to piss one's pants,' or..."

"Shut up! Euro in the jar!"

Marco really did look like he was on the verge of a psychotic break, pacing back and forth in front of me with the wheels of his oxygen tank cart squeaking out a distress that echoed its bearer's. Evening was settling slowly over the city, and eight-thirty Parisian time found the two of us standing on the front porch of 12 Rue Saint-Jean, cars whizzing by as Marco paced, hands knotting nervously together in front of him.

I had no idea how he could be so energetic. We'd spent most of the day at Notre Dame and the Arc de Triomphe, and I was exhausted, body aching and fatigue sitting heavy in my limbs. Marco was a livewire, though, every movement he made skittery and nervous. We'd been standing on Levi Rivaille's porch for fifteen minutes, and he still wasn't ready to go in. Mumbling under his breath, he only stopped pacing long enough to fiddle with the buttons of the vest he'd put on that morning along with a button-up and a bowtie. It was an outfit I'd seen Armin wear and be ridiculed for a hundred times. Marco made it look like something off a runway. "I look stupid. I overdressed; I look like I'm trying too hard. Do I look stupid?"

"You look beautiful," I said simply, truthfully. The answer would have been the same if he'd been standing there in his sweatpants and that ridiculously oversized Grateful Dead t-shirt I loved so much. There was a certain kind of liberty in being able to say things like that at will ever since the conversation we'd had in the Louvre the previous day. Now that I wasn't biting back the fact that I was in love with him, I could say things like that, even if the only response I got was a deep blush and noncommittal muttering like he gave me in that moment.

"I can't do this," Marco shook his head, looking at me with utter terror in his eyes. "I'm going to make a complete ass of myself, Jean, I can't-"

I reached over and rang the doorbell.

"_Why would you do that?!"_ he practically shrieked, flailing in some motion that just reminded me of a very angry squid and looking even madder when I started laughing, eyes widening to dark pits and the color draining from his face until his freckles stood out in sharp contrast. "You… I can't believe you, you complete _douchewagon!_"

"You've been spending too much time with Eren," I said drily.

The door swung open, but there was no one there. At least, that was how it appeared until we both looked below our own eye level. A little girl stood there, maybe four or five years old, sporting a head of violently red hair and wide-set, clever gray eyes. Her tiny hands wrapped cautiously around the doorframe, half of her body still hidden behind the old wood as she peeked out at us, her stare almost analytical.

"Uh, hello," I said, my confusion thinly-veiled. "Is there a grown-up around that we could speak to?"

_"Papa!" _the little girl turned around and shouted back the hallway behind her._ "Papa, il y à des gens à la porte." _

A deep voice replied from a room further back in the house, but I couldn't make out what had been said. Marco looked over at me with a confused frown. "Did you ever hear anything about him having a kid?"

"Nothing. Maybe we've got the wrong address," I shrugged.

Something moved in the hallway, and I had to crane my neck to get a better view. There was a living room directly to the left of the front door, a staircase to the right, followed by a few other rooms off the hallway and an open archway that led back to what appeared to be the kitchen. Through that archway walked a guy in his late-twenties-early-thirties who looked like he could be the front man of a hardcore band despite standing maybe five-foot-three as a generous measurement. There were sleeves of intricate tattoos of words inked on pages running up both arms and spreading across his collarbones beneath the worn old tank top he had on, ratty sweatpants rolled up in thick cuffs around his ankles so they were short enough for him to walk in. I could see the family resemblance even though he wasn't a redhead as well, pin-straight black hair styled in a sharp-angled undercut falling over eyes the same shade of gray as the little girl's that he pushed back with the hand that wasn't holding what looked like a glass of whiskey as he made his way to the door. _"Si c'est l'amant de Mademoiselle Hange, dites-lui qu'elle n'est pas finit avant neuf heure, et il n'est absoluement pas permit de-"_

He trailed off, fixing us with a look that was half irritation, half confusion. I laughed nervously. "Yeah, it would appear that we definitely have the wrong address."

"Can I help you?" the guy said, the flat baritone of his voice making an effortless switch from French to English. I could have sworn that I heard the slight, drawling bite of a Brooklyn accent in there somewhere.

"Yes, thank you," I nodded, grateful that I didn't have to struggle with my French to figure out what the hell was going on. "We're looking for a Levi Ri-"

"Yeah, that'd be me."

"Wait, what?" Marco said.

"Glad we've cleared up who I am. Now let's tackle who you are and how a couple of American brats got my fuuuuu-... flipping address," Levi Rivaille said, seemingly becoming conscious of his daughter's presence right before he cursed in front of her. Apparently the kid was bilingual.

"Wait… what?" Marco said.

I muttered something about him being up shit creek without me before I gently guided him over to the far side of the porch and stood in the middle of the welcome mat with a winning smile. "I'm guessing that given how things are playing out, Ms. Zoë didn't inform you that we were coming."

He forgot to watch his mouth after that. "Oh my _fucking_ God, are you the internet stalker?"

"Uh, I'm Jean Kirschtein, if that's what you've been calling me."

He sighed wearily and pinched the bridge of his nose like he was trying to quell a blooming headache, squatting down to the little girl's level and petting her hair back. _"Amelie, ma chérie, va jouer dans ta chambre."_

The little girl - Amelie? - had a scowl eerily similar to his, crossing her arms and rolling her eyes dramatically. _"Mais Papa, je veux-"_

_"Maintenant."_ He waited until she'd gone upstairs and the sound of a slamming door echoed off the walls before turning back to Marco and I. "One moment."

And then he shut the front door, leaving us standing on the porch in different degrees of shock.

"Wait… what?" Marco said.

"You know how they say 'never meet your heroes?' I think I just figured out why," I said.

"_HANGE!"_ an infuriated shout rang out inside the house, the door not doing much to muffle it.

"Ah, you're home. Thought I heard your dulcet tones," a chipper soprano with a light German accent responded, growing louder as its owner walked back the hallway.

"What the _fuck_ is this?!"

"That's a door, Levi. How many drinks have you had?"

A humorless, mocking laugh was the response she got before the sound of a hand slamming against the door punctuated it, making Marco and I jump. "I'm referring to the two poster boys for the Children's Miracle Network standing on my porch, smart-ass!"

"Oh, Jean and Marco are here? And you didn't answer my question," Hange replied chiddingly. Marco was looking more horrified by the second.

A long, frustrated groan. "Two! I've had two, Christ, get off my back, you're not mynanny! And you're also way, _way _out of fucking line by dragging those two across the pond when you _know_-"

"They're your biggest fans-"

"I don't give a _shit-_"

"One would think that you would, given the fact that-"

"You don't get to fucking talk about that; now send them home before I-"

"Is this how you want Amelie to learn how to treat people?" Hange said, and that shut him up, a heavy silence falling on the other side of the door. "Because I know that little girl like the back of my hand, and I would bet anything that she's upstairs with her ear pressed against her door. You told me once that the only important task you had in this world was being her father."

More silence. A low grumble that sounded like 'fuckin' hell.' The door swung open again, a tattooed arm poking out beyond the threshold and waving us inside. "Come in, come in."

Hange Zoë had a good six inches of height on her employer, a statuesque brunette with long hair pulled back in a no-nonsense ponytail and rectangular glasses with black frames perched on her somewhat hawkish nose. She was unconventionally pretty, brown eyes glinting excitedly as she ran over and wrapped Marco and I in a crushing, three-person hug. "I'm so glad to finally meet you two! Oh, you look just like I imagined you would!"

"You'll have to forgive Hange; she's a bit like an overly affectionate puppy," Levi said drily, shutting the door behind us and heading into the living room. "You should see her with her boyfriend. No wonder he hangs around on my porch all day."

"We broke up weeks ago," Hange said tightly, her smile faltering a bit.

"Did you? The politically correct thing to do would be to say I'm sorry, but I'll congratulate you instead. He was a shitstain on the stretched-out tighty whities of society."

"Okay, hold on, I'm… really confused?" Marco finally spoke up, his voice almost a squeak. "You… _you're_ Levi Rivaille."

He got an impassive look as a reply. "And you sound surprised by this."

"Well, it's just…" he stammered, flushing so red that his oxygen lines looked like white stripes cutting across his cheeks. "You know, when I read _The Infinity Vault_ your writing was just so eloquent, so perfectly constructed."

"And you were expecting some stuffy old guy in a quilted jacket and a cravat smoking a pipe. I'd apologize for not living up to your expectations, kid, but I'm really not sorry," Levi shrugged, flopping down on a plush leather couch and placing his drink carefully on a coaster on the coffee table. "I'm assuming you brats came here to talk, so talk."

"Be nice," Hange said tiredly, pulling over two armchairs for us. I collapsed gratefully into mine, the pain from my leg starting to resonate in my skull and teeth. Marco sat down more delicately, pulling up the notes on his phone and scrolling down through the list of questions he'd written out ahead of time.

"Okay, talking, I can do talking," he nodded, settling on a good opener. "Is the surname Rivaille a pen name?"

"Yup."

"So what's your actual last name?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," Levi muttered, grabbing a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his sweatpants before perching it between his lips and lighting it, a plume of heavy, acrid smoke blooming from his lips. Marco coughed a bit, which seemed to wake him up to the fact that he was lighting up in the same room as someone on twenty-four hour oxygen, sitting up and looking around for an ashtray. "Shit, I completely forgot, just let me…"

"Oh no, it's fine," Marco giggled a little unnaturally, biting back another cough. "What are you gonna do, give me lung cancer?"

"Fanboy," I muttered. He elbowed me in the ribs. I rolled my eyes and looked over at where Levi had gone back to smoking, stuck my hand out over the coffee table. "You mind if I bum one of those, actually?"

"Knock yourself out," he said, tossing the pack of cigarettes over to me. I popped one in the corner of my mouth and handed the pack back to him, sitting there in an odd silence that fell when he realized that I'd made no effort to light it. Marco groaned. Hange looked confused. But after a beat, Levi nodded, the look on his face drifting closer to approval than I'd seen it since we arrived. "I see. It's a metaphor. Very clever."

"So about the book!" Marco interjected before we could start in on a conversation about the beauty of metaphors, looking studiously at his notes. "I mean, it's stupid for my chief concern to be what happens to Archie the Corgi, but-"

"Landon mentions in chapter ten that he'll take care of Archie."

"Oh, okay, there's that mystery cleared up. So I guess I can kind of encompass the rest to save time…" Lips pursing contemplatively, Marco looked from me to Levi, running a hand through his hair. "What happened at the end?"

"Nothing," Levi said.

"But it just ended in the middle of everything, so what happened after the last page? What happened to Landon and everyone else?" Marco asked, looking confused.

"I repeat, nothing. The book ended."

"See, and this is where the topic of the ethics of closure comes into play," I interjected, holding my cigarette between two fingers and gesturing vaguely with it. "And how the integrity of an unfinished story is compromised by-"

"Shut up, Jean!" Marco cut me off, looking a little panicked. "Sorry. I mean, I get that it ended from Priscilla's perspective, yeah, but everyone else kept living, so what-"

"The book was written from Priscilla's perspective. She didn't get to see what happened after she died," Levi shrugged, exhaling a hazy cloud. "You're not going to get to see what happens to your loved ones after you die. Why should a realistically-written book be any different?"

"_Levi!"_ Hange gasped.

"I don't do sugar-coating," he responded in an indifferent monotone, looking over at Marco with an eyebrow raising slowly. "And that's what this is about, isn't it? Closure. How long have you got, kid?"

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Hange groaned, pressing a hand to her forehead and spinning around in place like she wasn't sure what to do.

"No one knows," Marco replied just as evenly, with a poker face that gave the other a run for his money. I was proud of him. "They stopped the growth, but they can't get rid of it. I'm in terminal limbo."

"And this is some sort of subconscious attempt to reassure yourself that the people you care about will still function normally after you snuff it, yeah?"

I felt sick to my stomach.

"It's really more about wanting to know the end of the story," Marco said in that clipped way he spoke when he got irritated, hands balling up in his lap.

Levi laughed, a cold, hollow sound that wasn't even delivered with the hint of a smile. "That's not how it works… Marco, right? Well, Marco, one would think that being the smart kid you are and having a stare-down with the Reaper for how many years, you'd figure out that you don't get the end of the story. It's a little too dark to read six feet under."

"I swear to God, I'm resigning!" Hange shrieked.

Levi sat up slowly and turned his head to look at her, tone conversational as he spoke. "From which job, your fabricated one as my assistant, or your real one as Amelie's nanny?"

Hange choked out a sob and walked stiffly out of the room, her heels clacking on the stairs.

"She won't quit," Levi rolled his eyes, watching her go. "She loves the kid too much. I'm just the unfortunate side effect that comes with her. Anyway, the fact is that you don't get an epilogue when you're dead. It's implied. There are billions of dead people. Someday, you'll be one of them. Life will go on, the sun will rise, the world will keep turning. The universe will tend towards entropy and everything will fall apart one day, and you won't matter. You're a damn sight more significant to the world than a fictional character, and you won't get an epilogue. Priscilla doesn't either."

"Fine," Marco said, getting up and following Hange out of the living room. "Fine."

The front door opened. The front door closed.

I had never been one to walk away from an argument, so I sat there. Levi looked at me. I looked at him. I laughed and said, "You know, you may have helped my cause by proving that there's someone out there who's more of a pretentious douchebag than I am."

"I'm not the one smoking an unlit cigarette."

"No, but you're the sanctimonious asshole who just crushed the dreams of one of the most genuinely good people the world has to offer."

"I'm good at drinking, writing, and crushing dreams," Levi shrugged, stubbing out his cigarette and reaching for another one. "That's the entirety of my skill set. What's yours?"

"Video games, creative use of metaphor, and falling in love with people I shouldn't," I replied.

"You'll want to watch that last one. It's dangerous," he hummed, his eyes flicking briefly towards the stairs and then back to me.

"Don't I know it," I laughed. We raised our cigarettes to each other like a toast.

A brief scuffle rose up from the hallway, a chorus of thumps that heralded the arrival of an extremely fat Corgi that barreled into the living room and ran headlong into the coffee table, knocking the ashtray onto the rug and spilling its contents everywhere. Levi swore and jumped up from the couch, grabbing the dog by its collar and hauling it away from the mess. "God_dammit,_ Archie!"

And it clicked.

I watched him pull the dog out into the hallway, cursing like a sailor the whole time before slamming the living room door shut behind him. "Damn beast makes a mess wherever he goes. His kennel's upstairs. Hange lets him out when she wants to piss me off."

"I get it," I said.

"What, that vengeful women are terrifying or that the world is a bitch and closure is a facsimile of the human imagination?"

"No." I shook my head, the pieces all falling into place as I spoke. "I get why you didn't tell Marco the end of the book. Why you didn't tell anyone the end of the book. It's not because of symbolism or closure or shit like that. It's because _this _is the end. That book was raw and personal and far too real to be just another cancer book that someone wrote on a whim. Amelie. Hange. The dog. It makes sense. Priscilla Romano wasn't just some character you made up. She was your wife."

A long, long silence. "Her name was Petra, actually."

"Holy shit," I said. "So the book was…"

"Was a work of fiction, but Priscilla was based on Petra, yes." Levi looked wearier than I'd ever seen a human being, slumping back to the couch and reaching for his drink again. "And since you've put that much together, you might as well hear the truth.

"She was my TA for a math class my sophomore year at NYU. I was an English major, she was getting her master's degree in Mathematics. Wicked smart. Funny as hell. Beautiful. There's this big math problem called the Goldbach Conjecture that's supposedly unsolvable. Her life's dream was to crack that stupid thing. It was all she wanted, and even if you hated math, you wanted to listen just to see her smile when she talked about it. I asked her for tutoring sessions because I'm shit at anything beyond long division and because, you know, I kind of wanted to fuck her. We got married three years later. Believe it or not, kid, I used to be a fucking smitten schoolboy. It was one of those big, cosmic loves that you roll your eyes at when you see it in works of fiction. I'd spent my whole life swearing that I'd never settle down, but I was okay with picket fences and mediocrity as long as it was picket fences and mediocrity with her."

A big, cosmic love. Yeah, I could relate to that, I thought, nodding silently and thinking of all the Oblivions hanging over my head.

"We found out she had ovarian cancer when she was about four months pregnant," he continued, looking positively ancient as he ground out his second cigarette in the ashtray and looked down into his drink. "And she looked at me right there in the doctor's office and did this thing where she set her jaw and she said, 'I'm having this baby.' And I didn't argue because god_damn_ she was stubborn; I loved it. So we played the waiting game and lost. By the time Amelie was born, it… they gave her months, right out of the gate. Didn't even bother with chemo."

"Jesus," I whispered, not even wanting to think about a situation like that.

"Jesus didn't have a damn thing to do with it," Levi snapped, knocking back the rest of his glass and grimacing. "So there I was in a shitty apartment in Brooklyn with an infant daughter and a dying wife, hell if I knew what to do. And it just got so damn sad, how all Petra really did was sit there and hold our little girl and talk about all the things she'd never get to see, everything we'd wanted that we'd never get to have. She needed a distraction, so I started writing the fucking book. I made up some bullshit algorithm that was supposed to be a mockup of the Goldbach Conjecture, invented a story about this knockout Math grad student and her grumpy fiance kicking ass and taking names because she _deserved_ that much, you know? She deserved somewhere she could go where she won for once. I'd give her a chapter at every doctor's appointment, and she'd smile and grab my hand and say 'Levi, you've gotta get this published. For us, you've gotta do it.' So I promised her I would, kept writing chapters even when the doctor's appointments stopped and she got too sick to read and I had to sit there and read them aloud. It was the best I could give her. All that great cosmic love, and all I could offer her was a fucking bedtime story.

"I was in the middle of writing a sentence the day she died. Went out in her sleep, real peaceful if you ignore the fact that Amelie and I never got to say goodbye. We didn't get closure. And after that, I couldn't look at my word processor without thinking about it. But I'd promised her, so I just printed out what I had and sent it to the publisher, figured it was a cop out, that I could say 'I tried, baby, I tried' if I ever had to answer for it. And of course, you know the rest. The book fucking blew up. This thing I completely pulled out of my ass hit the best-seller list, and that was it, man, that was just _it._ Suddenly I'm drowning in fan mail asking about the existentialism and deeper meaning behind this thing that I literally just wrote to help my wife ignore the fact that she was dying. And I'm like, 'how the fuck am I supposed to answer this?' It was really fucking me up more than I already was and I was a single dad and hurting and so stressed out that I couldn't fucking take it, so I just…"

"You dropped off the map," I said, nodding. I could understand that. He'd left a note on the proverbial fridge. He'd gotten on a plane with his daughter and his last good memories and run away from the carnage without leaving a trail so it could follow him.

"I thought about eating a bullet, actually, but I couldn't do that to my kid," he laughed sadly, shaking his head and reaching for a decanter on the coffee table to pour himself another drink. "And fuck, she's a great kid. Smarter than me already at five years old, stubborn as a braying donkey, biggest heart you've ever seen. Sometimes when I feel like I haven't done anything right, I look at her and it's okay for a minute.

"So yeah, we moved to Paris because that was always something that Petra wanted to do when we retired. I tried to do a lecture series at Sorbonne and couldn't hack it in the state I was in, but I met Hange there. I needed a nanny because let's face it, I'm a functional alcoholic with a tiny, tiny spark of paternal instinct at best. She needed a job to help her pay for grad school. It was a mutually beneficial agreement, and hell, I wanted to help her out. She wanted to say she was my assistant, use my name to nudge some doors open? I didn't give a damn. I'd like to see her go places. She's smart and she'll be insanely good at publishing, you know, talking nicely to people and all that shit."

I saw something in the way he looked over at the staircase, his face softening for a moment when Hange and Amelie's laughter floated down and bounced off the walls, but I neglected not to comment on it.

Levi sighed and let his head fall back to rest on top of the couch cushions, staring up at the ceiling. "You have to watch out for those great cosmic loves, kid. They're great while they last, but most of the time you end up at the bottom of a bottle with more lost than gained. Ask Hemingway. Ask me."

I laughed shakily, rolling the stolen cigarette between my fingers. "Well, I don't think it'll be an issue for me, seeing as my cancer's back."

The first person outside my family and Eren that I told was a washed-up, alcoholic author who hadn't wanted to be famous, sitting in his living room half-drunk and cataloguing his regrets to an eighteen-year-old cancer repeat offender. I wasn't sure whose story was sadder.

He raised his head slowly and looked at me for a moment. "And Marco doesn't know, does he?"

"I can't tell him," I said.

"You're a selfish, cowardly piece of shit then."

"He's got enough of this shit in his life; I'm trying to protect him-"

"You're trying to protect your chance at a star-crossed love because you know that boy's smart enough to run screaming when he hears your time bomb ticking," Levi deadpanned, sipping his drink and watching me over the rim of his glass with flat gray eyes. "You are not a knight in shining armor, Jean Kirschtein. No one is fooled, except for maybe him, and that's the tragedy of the whole thing."

I swallowed hard. "Yeah, you're exactly right. But I'll take my chances at a big cosmic love anyway, because I'm nothing like you."

"Really? You don't take out all your bitterness and anger at how shit the world is on people that care about you?"

The thought of my mother sobbing at our kitchen table cut into my chest like a shotgun shell at point-blank range. Pursing my lips, I got up from my chair and tucked the cigarette behind my ear. The argument was over. I'd lost irrefutably. "Not on the same level that you do. I'm sorry about everything you've had to go through, but you're still an unethical bastard."

"Oh, absolutely," he nodded, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards wryly as I opened the front door. "Tell him, Jean."

I shut the door behind me without answering him one way or the other.

Marco was sitting on the porch steps, knees drawn up to his chest and arms wrapped around his legs. He sniffed and blinked hurriedly when he heard the door open, but his eyes were too red and swollen to hide the fact that he'd been crying. He cleared his throat, but his voice was still thick and crackly when he spoke. "What took you so long?"

"I was tearing him a new one. Systematic takedown of his entire ethics system. It was a thing of beauty." It wasn't my place to tell Marco the truth about the situation I'd just left, even if it might have been in another. I grinned cheekily and extended my hand to help him up. "Come on, don't let that asshole ruin your trip. Let's go do something fun."

"Yeah," he smiled weakly, taking my hand and holding onto it as we walked back up the street and to the nearest Metro station. "Thanks, Jean."

"You have nothing to thank me for," I said, noting how his grip on my hand grew tighter the moment we were underground. In fact, he had more reasons to hate me than thank me. I thought back to what Levi had said about great cosmic loves ending in tragedies, about how the brightest stars burn out the fastest.

Marco was frightened of being underground, I was scared of flying, and we both were a little uneasy in elevators. We discovered this about halfway up the Eiffel Tower, both of us trying to look nonchalant even though it had turned into a contest of who could crush whose carpal bones first. Eventually, we started laughing half-derangedly, earning weird looks from the other people in the elevator, but they didn't exist to us, part of our own sphere of existence as we bypassed the restaurants on the first and second level of the tower and headed straight for the top.

The light pollution in Paris was too bright to see many stars, but the city at night looked like a night sky unto itself, smatterings of man-made constellations lighting up the ground below. I let out a low whistle and walked over to the edge of the observation deck, leaning on the railing. "Dare me to drop a penny?"

"Don't even think about it," Marco warned, wheeling his tank over and leaning on the empty stretch of railing beside me. He was very quiet, but he didn't look as upset as he had back on the porch on Rue Saint-Jean, more at peace than I'd seen him in a while when he looked over at me. "What did you say to him?"

"That he was an unethical bastard and that he'd crushed the dreams of one of the most genuinely good people the world had to offer." I could give him at least that much of the truth.

He smiled sadly. "I'm not a good person."

"You are," I said.

"I'm not," he insisted, looking at me like I was something to be pitied for thinking otherwise. I could see the city-constellations reflected in his eyes, the lights of the Tower throwing shadows across the planes of his face. "I'm not a good person. I never remember to turn the lights off when I leave a room. I let my shoes pile up into a mountain next to the front door before I put them away. I always take the last breadstick at Olive Garden and sometimes if I see someone that's dressed really ridiculously I'll laugh when they walk away. I get irrationally scared over stupid things and I get mean when I'm scared and I shut down and push people away because I'm afraid of what I have the capacity to do to them. I'm not a good person, Jean."

He was looking back over the railing by that point. I reached over and pressed my hand to his cheek, turned his head so he was facing me again. "Hey, look at me. You are, a hundred percent honestly and without a shred of doubt, the single greatest force of good that has ever come into my life. You're the kind of person who steals flowers from a coffee shop planter box to bring to cranky-ass Eren Jaeger because you forgot to get him a get-well-soon card. You're the kind of person that tries to keep people who love you out of the ICU because you don't want them to worry about you. You're insanely smart and funny and the freckles on your lips are ridiculously cute and even when you inadvertently kick me into koi ponds or charge me money for using metaphors I am very, very smitten with you."

His mouth moved like he was thinking of saying something, but instead he just raised his hand and let it rest in the curve between my neck and shoulder, moving forward until the toes of our shoes were touching.

I started giggling. Marco frowned and gave my shoulder a little shove. "What?"

I went from a giggle to a cackle, holding onto the railing for support. "I can't. This is too cliché. I can't do this."

"Can't do what?"

"I can't kiss you on top of the Eiffel Tower," I laughed, shaking my head.

Marco rolled his eyes, carding his other hand through my hair and leaning down so close that I could taste his whisper on my lips. "Good thing I can kiss you, then."

In the great cosmic loves of every sappy work of fiction, there is a kiss that steals the main protagonist's breath and turns their world upside down. I was part of a great cosmic love, this much I knew, but against every trope I'd ever heard, kissing Marco was not fireworks or swelling violins, was not waves crashing on the shore or a knot tightening in the red string of fate.

It was a nebula.

Stars are born in the softest of ways, cradled in clouds of dust as old as the universe itself and kindled until they blaze with a light of their own and find their place in someone's sky. I felt that moment deep in the hollow of my chest when his lips found mine, soft, tentative, like he was afraid to hold me too close for fear that I get pulled permanently into his gravity even though that fate had befallen me a long time before. He pulled back after a far too short a time, exhaling shakily, and the nebula beneath my ribs expanded to meet his, an exasperated huff tripping up my throat as I pulled him back down and pressed our mouths together hard enough to bruise. In a constellation as short-lived as ours, there was no allowance for hesitation. We had to shine while we had the opportunity to.

Marco was smiling like a beautiful fool when we parted. "I am in love with you."

My heart crawled upwards into my throat. "Okay."

"I've been in love with you for a while."

"Okay," I said, feeling like I could outshine the whole city.

"Stop saying that!" Marco laughed.

"Okay."

And I kept saying it, all the way down the tower and back to the hotel, a mantra sitting like honey on my tongue as I tried to convince myself that it was all real. "Okay, okay, okay."

He kissed me again in the elevator, and again in the hall outside my room as I fumbled for my key, and again and again and again on the unmade blankets tangled across my bed, warm palms sliding up beneath my shirt and pressed to my faltering heartbeat.

"So, uh… the scar's pretty gnarly," I muttered between kisses pressed to every freckle on the column of his neck, fingers tugging impatiently at his stupid bowtie. "Like, it's not something out of a _Saw_ movie or anything, but if you've never been around that sort of thing I don't know how much of a boner-kill it'll be, so…"

"Jean, what the hell are you talking about and why is it important enough that you aren't kissing me?" Marco sighed a little irritably, tugging at my hair and bringing my lips back to his.

"My leg," I answered against his mouth, squinting through the kiss at the unholy mess I'd made of the bowtie before pulling back, our lips disconnecting with a wet pop and our breaths uneven. "I mean, if this is going where I think it is, just trust me when I say me maneuvering the thing around will be a pain in the ass - bad word choice, Jean, _bad_ word choice - so I was gonna take it off but I didn't want you to get grossed out so-"

"Hey. Breathe." The light amusement in his smile was so pretty that it made the order hard to follow. The pad of his thumb brushed along the ridge of my cheekbone, followed by his lips. "There is nothing about you that could ever in a million years gross me out."

"I'll take your word for it," I shrugged, holding my arms up so he could peel the soft cotton of my shirt over my head. I was still working on the fucking bowtie. My game was so, so weak. "I can't… Marco, fix this."

He laughed and handled the bowtie issue while I handled the prosthetic issue, shelling off the vest and button-up along with it before bracketing my hips with his knees, smirking down at me as I grabbed for the hem of his undershirt and tugged it upwards.

"Wait, no, something's… is it stuck? Oh my God, it's stuck," Marco cackled, trying to untangle himself from where his undershirt had gotten tangled around his oxygen line. He eventually gave up and just let the ball of fabric slide down the line and sit on top of the tank, shaking his head and letting his fingers find a resting place in the spaces between my ribs. "We are a hot mess, Jean Kirschtein, you and I."

"We are," I nodded, laughing with him. He had freckles in the notches of his hipbones. "I love it. I love _you_."

"Okay," he said, leaning down to kiss me again, and again, and again.

It was nice. Nothing to shake the foundations of the universe, slow and clumsy and a little awkward, but it was the first time since I'd watched my body light up like the Fourth of July on my PET scan that I'd actually felt safe. Nothing about my situation had changed; my own body was still trying to kill itself and I still had five cycles if chemo to stare down when I got home. The only thing that had changed was Marco, his choice to go ahead and let our supernovas collide, smiling up at me as I fumbled and blushed and was on the whole much less of a Casanova than I wanted to be.

"You're beautiful," he said.

"Okay," I said.

I fell asleep almost immediately after, the long day and the pleasantly surprising end to it wearing me out effectively enough that I passed out in a stereotypical rom-com post-coital faux pas. But it was the moments before that I held onto even in my dreams, what it was like to lie beneath a nest of messy sheets with Marco's legs tangled up with mine, his head on my shoulder, nose brushing the hinge of my jaw and messy locks of dark hair tickling my cheek. Some part of me knew that those moments would never leave me, carved into my consciousness like a monument to the great cosmic love I was never supposed to have.

When I woke up, the sun wasn't up yet, and he was gone. I could hear the BiPAP machine whirring in the room next door, turned on my lamp and squinted blearily at my surroundings. My clothes were neatly folded on top of my dresser. Dork.

There was a note written on the hotel stationary resting on the pillow beside me.

_Remember that conversation we had at my party? So much for dying a virgin, huh? See you at breakfast. Let me know if we need to send you up a wheelchair ;)_

_-M  
P.S. Oh my GOD I just re-read that and I have spent way too much time with you and Eren.  
P.P.S. I love you.  
P.P.P.S. You gave me a hickey, you jerk.  
P.P.P.P.S. It looks kind of nice, though. I feel like a rebellious teenager.  
P.P.P.P.P.S. If I hear you use the word "okay" today I'll either punch you or get inconveniently turned on by remembering how nice you sound saying it.  
P.P.P.P.P.P.S. Okay I'm going now before I wake you up I love you I love you I love you oh my God you look so cute when you sleep I love you_

I laughed and tucked the note into the front of my copy of _The Infinity Vault, _thinking to myself that even if I never got an epilogue, my story was more than good enough.


	14. Chapter 14

By the time I finally got around to getting out of bed, taking my meds, and dragging myself downstairs, I'd almost missed breakfast entirely. It was almost surreal, how someone could look at Marco and never know that however many hours ago he'd been curled into my side, hair messed-up and cheeks flushed and utterly perfect. In the time since then, he'd gone back to being carefully put-together, taking small sips of tea and grinning widely over the top of his cup when he saw me walk out onto the patio. He had on a gray v-neck with a thin blue scarf wrapped not-so-subtly around his neck. I had on my clothes from the previous day and hadn't bothered looking for my hairbrush. But he looked at me the same way that he had the night before when he'd said I was beautiful, and so I didn't dwell on the fact that to anyone else I probably wasn't.

Karma looked a little peaky, pale enough that her freckles stuck out even more than usual as she sat across the table from her son, no food on her plate and a mostly-empty Bloody Mary in her hand. I smirked. "Have fun in Montmartre yesterday?"

"Absinthe is a hell of a drink," she mumbled, digging around in her purse for a bottle of Advil and giving me a weary smile. "I forgot that I'm getting too old for the wild life. I think I'm probably just going to hang out here today, but you two can go do whatever you want as long as you call to check in with me every few hours. I don't want to slow you down on your last day in Paris."

I went and grabbed a cup of coffee and a croissant, shrugging as I sat down next to Marco. He reached over and grabbed my hand under the table. "I don't even know what we're going to do today. I don't want to go back to that house for the sake of going on Hange Zoë's Magical Mystery Tour, do you, Marco?"

He scrunched up his nose and shook his head. "No thanks. I have no desire to relive yesterday's visit."

"Did something not go well with your author meet and greet?" Karma frowned, looking confused.

"You could say that," I said delicately, not wanting to go into detail for fear of accidentally letting something about my actual conversation with Levi slip. "Mr. Rivaille was every bit the prick I thought he'd be, so while I wasn't surprised, it was still a little disappointing."

"Well, they say to never meet your heroes…"

"Exactly. _C'est la vie._" Or perhaps _c'est la mort,_ given the situation. I plastic-smiled and pretended I hadn't just thought that. "I've decided that I'm going to write Marco an epilogue for _The Infinity Vault_ even though I'm not that wonderful of a writer. Regardless, we've got a day wide open now. Marco, ideas?"

"I don't want to do tourist-y stuff," Marco shrugged, twirling his empty teacup around in its saucer contemplatively. "Maybe we can just go to a park or something?"

"Sounds good to me. The Champ de Mars isn't that far, anyway," I nodded, a little grateful. There wasn't much to do in a park besides sit, and my leg was already protesting painfully from how much time I'd spent on it the day before.

"You boys have fun," Karma yawned, still working on her Bloody Mary even after we'd both finished our breakfast. "Marco, sweetie, there's an eight-hour tank ready to go under the bed upstairs, make sure you switch before you leave. Call me around four to check in?"

"Got it," he nodded, getting out of his chair and kissing her on the cheek before heading back towards the door. "You coming, Jean?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, sorry." The meds were starting to kick in, and I was a little out of it, stumbling belatedly to my feet and following Marco back into the Hotel. As soon as we were out of Karma's sight, I reached up and grabbed at his scarf, tugging it to the side with a grin. "So how bad is it?"

"Somewhere between 'flicked really hard with a rubber band' and 'trapped in a small space with an amorous piranha.' Hey, cut it out!" Scowling, he made a futile grab for his scarf just as I tugged it the rest of the way off his neck, showing a dark purple bruise tucked into the hollow of his collarbone. Something pervasive and uncomfortably warm settled in my stomach.

"Niiiiice," I smirked.

"You're an idiot."

"Your face is bright red, holy fuck, you're so cute," I laughed, tucking the scarf back into place and leaning over to press my tips to his temple. "And I'm _your_ idiot."

"Which means I have a responsibility to feed you and walk you and put up with your utter dweebdom," Marco sighed dramatically, punching the call button for the elevator and utterly failing to hide a smile. "I never listened to what people told me about how much work it is to have a boyfriend."

I blinked over at him owlishly, unable to find my voice until the elevator doors shut behind us. "Am I your boyfriend now? I wasn't aware."

Marco looked over at me with a deadpan that I could almost physically feel. "Not to be vulgar, Jean, but given where parts of me were in relation to parts of you last night, I'd say that yeah, you're my boyfriend now."

I laughed so hard that there were tears streaming down my face by the time we got to his room, my stomach aching as I flopped down on his bed and wheezed for air. Marco blushed again. "Sex jokes, Marco? Honest-to-God sex jokes? You really have been hanging out with Eren too much."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," he grumbled, tugging the oxygen tank his mother had mentioned out from under his bed and switching it out with the one already in the cart. His face softened into a muted glow of a smile when he looked up at me. "I love you."

"Okay," I said with a shit-eating grin, remembering the post-post-post-post-post-script of the note he'd left on my pillow about what would happen if I used the word.

Marco cursed under his breath and threw a pillow at me, whispering something about me being infuriating before he crawled up onto the bed and yanked me forward by my shirt, crushing our mouths together. I let out a muffled little laugh against his lips, trying to tug him forward and lay down, but he shook his head and pulled back, eyes flicking over at the door. "Mom, remember?"

"So we can go next door to my room."

"We have less than twenty-four hours left in Paris, Jean, I'm not spending it… _canoodling_ in a hotel room!"

"You'd rather spend it in a park?" I snickered. "And did you really just use the word _canoodling?_"

"Yes I would, yes I did, and we can canoodle all we want when we get home," Marco huffed, climbing off the bed and glaring at me. "Brush your stupid hair; you look like you just stumbled out of a crack house."

"Such tender endearments from my apparent boyfriend," I sighed, grabbing his hairbrush off the dresser and complying before leaning over and kissing him again, gentler this time. "I love you. There, happy? No more 'okay's."

"I'm still charging you a Euro in the jar for the first one. I love you too."

It was surreal, I thought as we headed back downstairs, how three days had changed everything. Three days ago, he'd recoiled from the simple fact that he'd woken up holding my hand on the plane, and now his fingers were braided up with mine like it was the most natural thing in the world as we got back on the elevator and headed downstairs, an easy, happy smile sitting on his lips like it belonged there. The Marco I'd met and come to love was world-wise and a realist and so, so guarded, every movement and word measured to cause as little damage as he could. A self-aware supernova. Now it was almost like our positions had switched. I loved him like this, how everything he did seemed earnest and real in the quietest of ways, but it made a hot knife of guilt slice its way between my ribs whenever he looked at me. The tables had turned, and now I was the one trying to hold back the kerosene in my veins and trying not to worry about the fact that I'd always seen Marco as a living flame. I wondered if this was how he'd felt all the time before that moment on top of the Eiffel Tower. The thought made me feel sick.

"Are you all right?" he asked as our arrival on the ground floor dinged through the speaker in the elevator.

"I'm fine," I nodded, squeezing his hand and carefully constructing a look of contentment. "Just a little tired, which is your fault, for the record."

Actual supernovas had it much easier than metaphorical ones.

His smile was so distracting that I walked right off the elevator and into another person, stumbling backwards and blinking confusedly. "Oh, I'm sorry, wasn't watching - Hange?"

Her hair was up in the same high ponytail, glasses perched haphazardly on her nose. She had on slacks and a pretty purple blouse that matched the amethyst studs in her ears, but the more attention-drawing accessory was the tiny body clinging shyly to her hand, bright red hair wind-tossed and gray eyes watching me so analytically that I felt a bit uncomfortable.

"No, no, _I_ am sorry. That's why I'm here," Hange rushed out, her accent thickening around the words as she stumbled over them. "I had to email the St. Rose Foundation to figure out where you were staying or I would have come sooner. I wanted to apologize for what happened yesterday."

"It wasn't your fault, Hange," Marco said kindly, and I was reminded again of how disturbingly _good_ he was, forgiveness coming as easily to him as cynicism came to me. He'd been the one getting his dreams demolished, and he still had it in him to smile. I loved him. I loved him. I loved him.

"No, it was," she shook her head, looking positively guilt-ridden. "I completely ignored the fact that he gets… worse than usual around this time of year. I know it might not be any comfort to you now, but I feel the need to tell you that Levi is not what he comes across as. He's a good man and a good father and all of his shortcomings are the result of some very tragic circumstances that I'm not at liberty to discuss, but sometimes he can be… blunt. Especially when it comes to sensitive subjects."

Sensitive subjects like cancer, something that took the best part of his life away from him. Yeah, I could understand that. But Marco couldn't, because he hadn't been there to hear the story. Even so, he gave Hange a gentle smile, reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder. "It's okay. I spend the majority of my time with this dork; I'm used to people being inappropriately blunt and making everything into extended metaphors."

"It's not okay," replied Hange, her face ashen. Amelie was slowly becoming less shy and more curious, more of her emerging from behind Hange's leg as she watched the three of us. Hange's hand smoothed down her hair reflexively, keeping her close enough that she couldn't wander off. "I could have prevented this whole thing by just taking the time to think things through. It wasn't fair to either of you. It wasn't fair to him."

There was something strained hitching at the edges of her voice on that last sentence. I decided not to ask her about it, although the answer was kind of implicit in the fact that she'd come all the way down here with Amelie in tow just to justify Levi's actions. I thought of how he'd watched her leave the room in tears the day before, his face drawn tight as if he'd realized too-late that he'd hurt her. My conclusion was that they were both oblivious and that the world had a very interesting sense of humor. "Don't beat yourself up too much. We're both tough, and I know that I, at least, have heard worse."

Marco abandoned the conversation in favor of squatting down so that he was eye level with the smallest member of our collective, grinning over at her. "_Bonjour,_ Amelie."

"_Parlez-vous français?"_ she asked, an eyebrow raising in a skeptical expression that was an exact mirror of her father's.

"_Non._ Well, not very well, anyway," he shook his head, laughing.

"That's okay; I speak both," Amelie said, smiling back at him brightly and making a flawless switch to English, although she had a slight pull of a French accent along the edges of her vowels. "I like your scarf. What's your name?"

"Thank you, I actually bought it at the shop down the street. I'm Marco. You answered the door when I came to your house yesterday, remember?"

"Uh-huh. And then Papa sent me upstairs, but I sat in the hall and listened." She grinned conspiratorially before her head tilted to the side. "What's on your face?"

"Amelie!" Hange chided.

"It's fine," Marco looked up at her with a soft smile before turning back to Amelie. "It's called a cannula. I have trouble breathing and it helps me."

"Would it help me breathe?" she asked, the kind of earnest curiosity that only little kids have sparking in her eyes.

"I don't know. You wanna try it?" Marco replied, unhooking the plastic lines from behind his ears and situating them over Amelie's. For as small of a change as it was, he looked drastically different without the thin tubes angled down over his cheekbones, lighter almost, like he wasn't saddled with the usual burden of carrying around his illness like a neon sign. I loved him.

"It tickles," Amelie giggled, pulling the lines off her face and scrunching up her nose as she handed them back to Marco, who had started to wheeze a little in the time he'd been oxygen-less. "Are you going back to America?"

"Tomorrow, yeah," he nodded, tucking the cannula back into place and breathing a little easier.

"Do you want to be pen pals? We're supposed to get pen pals for school next year."

"If that's okay with your dad and Hange, sure," Marco laughed, getting back to his feet and ruffling her hair. "But hey, Jean and I are gonna go to the Champ de Mars, so we'd better get going. It was nice to see you again."

"Okay! Mademoiselle Hange, can Marco be my pen pal?"

"We'll see, _Spatzi,_ I'll talk to your papa when we get home," Hange nodded, reaching down to grab her hand before looking over at me and extending her hand. "Good to see you again, Jean. Safe travels home."

"Thanks, you too," I said, shaking her hand. I felt folded edges of paper pressed into my palm, closed my hand around it when I pulled away. Hange turned around to talk to Marco, and I took advantage of having his back to me, unfolding the note that Hange had slipped me and scanning the elegant, spidery writing on the wrinkled paper.

_Our conversation yesterday before I could make a crucial observation. Unethical bastard though I may be, consider the point I'm trying to make. If you really want to protect him, tell him. You're only denying him the small amount of closure he can have if you don't. You've seen what happens to people who have that taken away. Do you want Marco to turn into me?_

_Regards,  
Levi_

A leaden weight sank into my stomach so hard that I could almost feel the floor give beneath my feet. I looked over at Marco, who was talking animatedly with Hange, leaning down to give Amelie a hug, that inherent light beneath his skin shining so brightly that he could have powered a whole solar system with his smile. I tried to imagine him jaded and bitter, that smile dulled forever and every word he said a rusty razor on someone else's skin.

No. No, I didn't want that.

We stood in the lobby and watched Amelie and Hange walk back out into the street. Marco turned back to me and raked a hand through his hair, still grinning. "What a cute kid. Almost impossible to believe she's Levi's genetic material."

"I think Hange's had a lot of influence there," I said tightly, feeling like I was choking on the words. "Hey, can we go back upstairs real quick?"

"Sure. You forget something?"

"Yeah," I nodded, stepping back onto the elevator. Every lie I told him made it that much harder to reach down in the hollow of my chest and wrap my shaking fingers around the truth.

There was no hiding it by the time we made it back to my room, my breath hitching and my entire arm trembling as I struggled with my key, practically collapsing inside and grabbing the door frame for support.

"All right, you're not okay," Marco said decisively, shutting the door behind him and walking over to cradle my jaw between his hands, tilting my head up so that I had to look at him. I wished he wouldn't. "Jean. Baby, look at me. What's going on?"

The term of endearment made my guts drop to my shoes. I didn't deserve this. I didn't deserve him worrying over me and pushing my hair back from my face and _loving_ me, not when all I'd been doing for almost a month was feeding him lie after lie after lie and now it was all about to come crashing down around my head.

I wondered how long it would take him to walk out the door, started counting down the seconds I had left where he could still be mine.

"I need to talk to you," I croaked, throat parched and constricted. "I'm sorry, I know you wanted to go to the park, it's stupid we can do it later we can-"

"Hey." His lips brushed mine softly, cutting me off, eyes dark and heavy with concern as he watched me falter and start to break. "Forget the park. Talk to me. Tell me what's wrong. Did I do something?"

"No! God, no." Shaking my head hurriedly, I reached up and pressed my hand over his, my voice unbearably small the next time I spoke. "Do you really love me?"

"Of course," Marco nodded, leaning forward and resting his forehead against mine. "I have for a long time, actually. Since the night I ended up in the ICU. Is that what this is about? Because I'll tell you I love you every ten seconds if that's what you need."

I shook my head again, a sharp back-and-forth motion. "That's not it. I… you… can we sit down?"

He was frowning now, a hand pressed to the small of my back as I fell bonelessly down onto the edge of my bed, elbows perched on my knees as I leaned down and put my hands. Words had always been my willing companions, coming as easily to me as breathing, and now I could neither speak nor breathe, fixated on the scenario replaying again and again in my head of him realizing what I was and what I'd done, walking away and suffering my presence on the plane tomorrow and never speaking to me again, of seven months with nothing to do but mull over how I'd lost him above everything else I was losing. But then that image of him being another Levi crossed my mind again, the idea that my lies could turn him into that. I took a deep, shuddering breath.

I cared more about his chance at happiness than my comfort. As a selfish individual, it was a new, awful sensation.

"The night you ended up in the ICU," I said tremulously, "I felt this really awful pain in my leg. It had been bad for a few weeks before that, but I thought my liner was just going bad. I was running upstairs to get in my car to go to St. Rose, and this pain just hit me out of nowhere, knocked me right off my feet. It happened again at the hospital. And again a few hours later."

Every trace of color drained from Marco's face.

"I wrote it off and told myself that it was probably just because I'd been up and around more than usual, but I had this nagging feeling and I was already at the hospital, so I called my doctor and got signed up for a PET scan," I pressed on, eyes starting to burn and throat closing off.

"No," Marco whispered.

"My whole body was a neon sign, Marco." And there it was. In that moment, I was my mother five years ago, unable to physically say _Jean has cancer._ Instead, I draped it in metaphor and dressed it up in pretty turns of phrase, my last effort to protect him caving in as a sob tore painfully through my throat, hands fisting in the rumpled blankets. I could see the dent in the pillow next to mine where his head had been. I wanted to die right there to save him the trouble of waiting around. "It's everywhere. Back in the leg, my liver, the lining of my chest, everywhere. I couldn't tell you, not when you were just out of the ICU and I was so glad that you were alive, and I… I was so goddamn _selfish._ I didn't want to fuck up my chances of you falling in love with me, so I kept saying 'I'll tell him soon, I'll tell him when the time's right,' but I can't lie to you anymore, not after… _Fuck,_ I'm so sorry, I'm such a piece of shit, I'm so sorry."

It was a repeat of that first breakdown I'd had in my car the day my scan came back, every plastic smile I'd put on for the past month shattering into deadly-sharp shards around my feet and digging into my skin as they fell. I was a shaking, sobbing mess, curled in on myself and feeling like I was drowning, unable to breathe or move or think of anything other than continuing the countdown to when Marco walked out the door and out of my life.

But he didn't. A few torturous seconds passed where he didn't move, didn't speak, didn't do anything. Then he kicked his shoes off, scooted back a little on the bed, and pulled me into his lap, still blubbering and completely incoherent. I'd expected him to push me away, and his arms were locked around me so tightly that I was surprised even through the breakdown tearing across my consciousness, thinking that he was stronger than he looked. He didn't walk away, didn't yell at me or tear into me for being a lying bastard or take back his love entirely. He sat there, fingers lacing through my hair, and held me.

I loved him.

"Hey, it's okay," he said thickly. He was crying, too. "It's okay, I forgive you, it's okay, you're okay. I love you. I love you. I love you."

He kept saying it until I could breathe again, great shuddering gulps of air that hit my lungs like cold blades. All of me ached, from my swollen eyes to my overworked muscles to my heart. I'd dampened pretty much the entire front of Marco's shirt with tears, and the top of my head felt wet when I sat up and ran a hand through it, sighing shakily. "I'm sorry. God, Marco, I'm so sorry. You should hate me."

"Don't tell me what to do," he said tearfully, swiping his palm across his cheeks and sniffing. "I love you. Deal with it."

"I just… I figured you'd be mad as hell that I neglected to tell you I had cancer until after you fucked me," I laughed thickly and without any real humor, so incredibly tired. "It's kind of like naming a new puppy and then finding out it's got heart worms."

"You're not a puppy, and what happened last night was hardly _fucking,_ okay, it was…"

"I swear to God if the words 'making love' come out of your mouth I'm making you your own Metaphor Jar and charging you a hundred dollars."

Marco breathed out a laugh, reaching down and grabbing my hand. "Regardless. I don't hate you. I don't think I could ever hate you. But how could you not tell me for a month?"

"I mean, it helped that we were both busy. You were shopping for the trip and going to your appointments, I had chemo…"

"But if you've been in treatment for a month, your hair…" he said, reaching up and smoothing the mess it had become back into place.

"New drug," I said, shrugging. "No hair loss. Extra puking. It seemed like a fair trade-off for you not having to worry."

"Jean, you're a dumbass." Sighing, Marco reached over and pulled me into his arms again, burying his face in my neck. "And now we're in this together, so no more lying to me. Have you been doing okay?"

All right, now tell him the rest. Tell him no. Tell him 'seven months.' Tell him that it's best if he moves on now, because there's nothing obligating him to stay in your orbit while everything you are collapses.

I couldn't do it. "Swimmingly. Don't you worry, Bodt, I'm going to fight this shit and be around to annoy you for a good long time."

In that moment, I decided to shoot for the five percent and stop wallowing in the ninety-five. If anything was worth the fight, it was Marco.

"D'you still want to go to the park?" I asked wearily.

He shook his head and scooted up to the top of my bed, pulling me up with him until I was lying with my ear pressed against the steady thrum of his heartbeat. "No. I want to spend the rest of my time in Paris canoodling in a hotel room."

"I love you," I muttered.

"I love you too. But you owe me like seventy Euros in the jar on top of your current tab," Marco smiled. My heart splintered.

I had loved his smile so fondly that it was all too easy to tell the real one from the plastic one he'd put on for my sake.


	15. Chapter 15

Seven months became six.

We got on a plane in Paris that I was just as terrified of the second time around, came home to even worse jet lag and the grim realization that any pretense of normality was over. Marco and I left that brighter, easier world stashed in corners around the top of the Eiffel Tower, in the folds of the sheets in my hotel room, pressed into the letters of the note still folded up in the front of my copy of _The Infinity Vault_.

I threw Levi's note away in an airport trash can. I didn't need his hard-knocks life lessons anymore. I needed the scribbled reassurances that I was loved and that I looked cute when I slept and that my massive dork of a boyfriend had been truly and boundlessly happy with me for however short a time.

For all the yelling and crying that parted us, coming home was surprisingly easy. Mom and Dad asked calmly how the trip had been; I explained what had happened with Levi and more importantly what had happened with Marco (conveniently leaving out the sex part), and they seemed happy although not at all surprised. My grounding sentence was a week without leaving the house, and I knew that it was a strategic decision on my parents' part to start it the day before I began my second round of chemo. Not like I'd be feeling like leaving the house anyway.

And so it began again, sitting in a chair at Memorial at six in the morning every day. The only difference was that I felt even worse, sicker and shakier. That, and instead of Eren sitting beside me, I had Eren and Marco.

Part of me hated having him there, my proud streak that didn't want him seeing me at my weakest and the part of me that loved him too much to watch the poorly-masked worry in his eyes. I refused to let him be in the room when they put my PICC line in, an inpatient procedure that involved a long plastic conduit being inserted into my arm and snaked up through my blood vessels until it hit the superior vena cava just above my heart. Two valves on the outside, pressed against my skin by medical tape, one to put the chemo in, another to get the blood out for tests. Easy. Simple. That is, until you had to shower with your arm sticking out of the curtain and be careful how you bent your arm for fear of damaging the line and having to sit through the installation again, wide-awake with minimal local anesthetics and feeling every creepy-crawly moment of some doctor going at your veins like a clogged drain. I dealt with that unpleasantry myself, kicked Marco and Eren out under no uncertain terms and told them they both needed to go get food anyway.

I couldn't keep them away from the hours in the same old chair, though, couldn't say enough to convince them to go home and remove themselves from watching me shiver under piles of blankets and go paler than a sheet. I couldn't convince them from piling into the back of my mom's van and following me home to do nothing but watch me sleep and puke and turn my nose up at any food that came within a ten-foot radius. I couldn't stop myself from finding some solace in the fact that it was all a little less hellish with my head in Marco's lap, his fingers lacing through my hair as I drifted in and out of consciousness.

Seven days, seven trips to the hospital, seven nights when I fell asleep to the lull of Marco's voice and woke up to an empty bedroom. Two cycles down, four to go.

It was two days without an IV dripping into my arm before I started feeling anywhere close to human again, my laptop whirring where it was balanced on my stomach and arms tilted crookedly so I could type without having to move from where I lay with my head resting against Marco's chest.

_Hey, Hange -_

_Hope you're well and that you haven't committed homicide yet - the fact that you've made it more than a week without doing so is commendable in itself. Speaking of infuriating, vertically-challenged alcoholics, do you mind passing this on to your boss? And tell him to get his own email, yeah? Tell Amelie I say hi._

_Thanks,_

_Jean_

_Levi (no more of this "Dear Mr. Rivaille" shit. I'm not addressing you by your pen name, you pretentious fuck),_

_I told him. It sucked. He's holding it together when he's around me, but God knows what's going on when he isn't. You'd better be right about this._

_I don't have time to dress things up in metaphors and sugarcoat them anymore, so I'm going to be frank with you, which I honestly think you'll appreciate. Truth is, I don't like you. Or respect you. You're rude and unpleasant and backward and generally a complete dick. That said, you give some pretty solid advice, and you wrote a book about dying so well that something very, very stupid in me is making me think that maybe you'll have some valuable input for my recent distresses over what a bitch terminal illness is._

_You see, I've spent the entirety of my five years in and out of being a cancer patient obsessed with the idea of legacy. Delusion or not, I operate under the pretense that I am going to leave my mark on the world. Recently, however, I've come to realize that any marks I've attempted to make are shallow and meaningless. Any thoughts on how to cope with and/or remedy that?_

_Regards,  
Jean_

_P.S. Are you romantically involved with your kid's nanny? Marco and I have a bet._

"What are you working on?" Marco asked, voice resonating through his ribs and vibrating against my back.

"Nothing," I said, slamming my laptop shut hurriedly. "That epilogue to _The Infinity Vault_ I promised I'd write for you. Top secret. No peeking."

"Dweeb," he snorted before cursing under his breath and leaning forward, his forearms perched on my shoulders and hands twitching at a game controller resting against my sternum as the sound of loud explosions boomed from my TV. He'd spent most of the week playing Mass Effect - and by "playing," the truth of the matter was closer to "dying five times every time he had to fight and crawling through the game on beginner's mode" - and was currently getting his entire squad shot to pieces, just barely surviving long enough to make it to the next cutscene.

Eren, curled up and listening in one of the gaming chairs a few feet away, wrinkled his nose distastefully. "Oh, come on."

"What?" said Marco, clearly offended.

He snorted and shook his head. "You're seriously going to let the bastard live? You play this game like Jean. Your Shepard is weak, man."

"His Shepard is making important diplomatic decisions instead of shooting everything that moves and making everyone an enemy," I pointed out, tilting my head back until I could see a half-upside-down view of Marco's conflicted expression as he scrolled up and down through dialogue, options. "Don't let him bully you into playing the game like a heavy-handed Cro-Magnon, sweetheart. It's your Shep and your playthrough."

"I'm not," he shook his head, leaning down and pressing a quick kiss to my forehead. "I'm just considering my options. If I ever feel like Eren is bullying me I'll just move all the furniture around and then kick back and watch the free entertainment as vengeance."

"Hey, fuck you, man!"

"If you like your current ease of mobility, don't tell me how to save the galaxy," Marco shrugged, clicking the diplomatic dialogue option and negotiating matters with the enemy instead of slaughtering their leader on the spot.

Eren grumbled something about not being informed that Commander Shepard had undergone surgery to have his balls removed, but Marco just rolled his eyes and started the next segment of the game, leaning down at periodic intervals to steal kisses and swap conspiratorial smiles.

"You know, I always thought all that stuff about your other senses getting better when you go blind was bullshit, but they were totally right," he said eventually, looking like he'd just had an epiphany.

I tilted my head and said, "Really?"

He nodded sagely. "I can smell the cute rolling off the two of you from over here. It's disgusting."

"If you don't like it, the door's about five steps to your left," Marco said flatly, his nose brushing my cheekbone as he looked up at Eren with a smile twitching at the corners of his lips.

"Yeah, I mean, you could always go hang out with your other friends…" I nodded, smirking tiredly. "Oh, wait."

"Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha _ha,_" Eren drawled out a string of false laughter, holding a middle finger up in my general direction. "Why did you never pursue stand-up, Jean? Have trouble with the comedy clubs not letting in horses?"

"Up yours, Ray Charles Junior!"

"You'd like that too much, Seabiscuit!"

"Gentlemen," Marco groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Play nice. I'm too busy trying to beat this game to babysit you."

"Forgive me for being salty about people being cute with their significant others when I no longer have one," Eren grumbled, kicking at the empty gaming chair and looking dejected. "It's been months, and not so much as a text to see if I'm still alive."

"Wait, what?" I said.

Eren was too busy singing an off-key chorus of 'Heartless' by Kanye West to answer me.

"No, seriously, hold up." I sat up in bed, which had the dual consequence of vertigo slapping me upside the head and Marco dropping his controller with a mournful wail as Shepard fell in a spray of gunfire for the umpteenth time. I ignored him and stared disbelievingly at Eren. "Are you telling me that Mikasa never came to see you in the hospital?"

"Not once."

"And she never even made contact to see if you were okay after the surgery?"

Eren laughed humorlessly.

I shook my head, opening my mouth to respond before my phone buzzed in my lap. Frowning, I looked down and swiped open my new email, raising an eyebrow. "That was quick."

"What was quick?" asked Marco.

"Nothing," I said.

_Jean,_

_For the record, I'm perfectly fine with you putting the kibosh on "Dear Mr. Rivaille." Given the fact that you and I are now privy to each other's well-guarded secrets, one would think that we'd at least be on first-name basis. Also, I lied in my initial correspondence about not having a personal email. I had an email address in college. It took me for-fucking-ever to remember the password, though, so count yourself as fortunate. I'm not doing it for you. I'm doing it because if you open up a dictionary and look for "nosy," Hange Zoë's picture will be staring back at you._

_(Speaking of which, you're a rude, invasive brat, and I am not obligated to answer the question in your postscript, but do so only to clear up any misconceptions and thrive on the hopes that you lose your immature little bet. No, I am not fucking my kid's nanny, nor do I plan to be.)_

_As for your question, I would like to call your attention to the email you sent me regarding author integrity. If you'll remember, you said at one point that integrity is subjective. The concept of a legacy is very much the same. At the end of the day, it is the people carrying your legacy who will decide what it was and was not. So while this means that at the present time you are incapable of saving puppies from a burning building or singlehandedly inventing a solution for world hunger, you are still capable of leaving a mark that goes deeper than ironically walking around with an unlit cigarette in your mouth and taking your boyfriend(?) to Paris to harass a reclusive author and generally being a pissbaby. You are not a super hero. You are not an exceptional human being. It's a fact of life. If everyone was exceptional, exceptionality wouldn't even be a concept. However, rather than wallowing in your mediocrity, you could do something to change it. Be active in leaving a legacy that matters to you and to the ones who will hold it. Change something relevant to your life. Create. Write something, although with your penchant for metaphor you'd either be a shit novelist or a great one. Do something you've been planning to do for months but keep putting off. Right an injustice, no matter how small. It's all about the baby steps, kid._

_And for God's sake, don't make it so contrived, you self-aggrandizing little shit. Da Vinci didn't sit down in front of some guy's wife with a paint brush and gently whisper to himself, "Hell yeah, this one's going in the Louvre." Live. Fucking live. You're having enough trouble doing that as it is without trying to climb up Maslow's Hierarchy like a metaphysically disillusioned Spider-Man._

_Sound enough advice for you? Let me know how it pans out._

_Amelie is sitting on the couch with me. She says hello._

_All the best,  
Levi_

_P.S. You're right about me being backward, which leads me to tell you that the last time I asked a woman on a date, I had a panic attack immediately afterwards, and she was still stupid enough to marry me. I don't have a romantic future, much less one with Ms. Zoë. I'll thank you not to inquire further._

I snorted and shook my head, putting my phone in the pocket of the soccer shorts I'd been wearing the day I took an unfortunate dip in Marco's koi pond. If nothing else, I'd at least found a kindred spirit who was possibly even more skilled at the art of being an asshole than I was. Marco was too busy trying not to get his squad decimated to pay attention to the crooked smile on my face, his chin perched on top of my head and eyes narrowed into dark slits in concentration. He did this thing where he stuck the very tip of his tongue out when he was focusing really hard on something. Cute.

"She seriously hasn't said anything to you since the surgery?" I asked Eren again.

"Not a peep," he shook his head, sighing.

_Right an injustice, no matter how small._

"Marco?" I said.

He paused the game and looked down at me. "Yeah, babe?"

A slow, mischievous grin stretched across my face. "Any chance you've got five bucks on you?"

"I will not be complicit in this," Marco said fifteen minutes later, lips pursed as he piloted his mom's minivan through the rush hour traffic downtown.

"He says as he drives us to the convenience store to buy supplies." Rolling my eyes, I looked back at Eren in the back seat, clutching his cane and smiling like a kid at Christmas. "Besides, can you really deny Eren this satisfaction?"

"I can if his satisfaction is going to get me arrested."

"Wimp," I laughed, leaning over to plant a big, sloppy kiss on Marco's cheek. "You won't get arrested if you don't participate."

"I'm buying the stuff. I'm the getaway driver," he sighed dramatically, pulling into the convenience store of a gas station a few blocks down from the entrance to Mikasa's neighborhood. "You've already pulled me in too deep. If we're gonna Bonnie and Clyde this, I'm in it for keeps."

"I love you," I grinned, batting my eyelashes at him until we both dissolved into laughter. "Okay, now go in and get two cartons of eggs."

He looked suddenly panicked. "Why do _I_ have to go get them?!"

"Because Eren's blind, you have the money, and I'm exhausted from walking to the car once," I said, immediately wishing I could take it back. Marco looked at the spot in the arm of my hoodie where my PICC line was hiding beneath the fabric, a sudden heaviness settling over his face that was gone as quickly as it came, covered with a plastic smile and a quick peck on my lips as he got out of the van, hauled his oxygen tank down onto the asphalt, and disappeared inside the store.

"Have I ever mentioned that you have the coolest boyfriend ever?" Eren said, bouncing excitedly in his seat.

"No, but it's kind of implied," I shrugged, watching the top of Marco's head wind back through the aisles through the front window. Minutes passed, and I tried to ignore how tired I was, fighting the urge to just lean back in the passenger seat and sleep. Even two days post-chemo I was still feeling queasy and prone to dizziness if I moved too fast, but I reasoned that if I couldn't soldier through that for the sake of righting an injustice, then I wasn't worthy of the legacy it would leave.

Marco came back looking fidgety with two cartons of eggs in the crook of his arm, hopping back up in the driver's seat with an apprehensive grimace. "Are you guys sure you want to do this?"

"You scared?" Eren laughed.

"I spend the majority of my time around you, Eren. Nothing scares me anymore." That shut him up. Sighing, Marco put the keys in the ignition and fired up the van's rumbling gas-guzzler of an engine, pulling smoothly out of the parking lot and heading up the street. "It all just seems kind of… middle school. I get that Eren's definitely the party in all of this that got screwed over, but what does this solve?"

"It doesn't _solve_ anything," I said, digging a cigarette out of the pack in my hoodie pocket and holding it in the corner of my mouth as we pulled up to the gate of Mikasa's neighborhood. "It evens the score. It gives Eren closure. It frees up his heart to go after the hot-sounding girl that read him _The Infinity Vault_ in rehab."

"She _is _hot. I got Armin to stalk her Facebook," Eren nodded proudly.

"I can't believe I'm friends with one of you and dating the other," said Marco, looking bemusedly out the windshield. "What has my life regressed to?"

"Something more fun than reading obscure novels and sitting in your room listening to Simon and Garfunkel vinyls all day," I replied, handing him the piece of paper with the gate code on it. Thomas lived three houses down from Mikasa, and I still had enough street cred from our soccer days to solve all our problems with one text. Looking nervous again, he punched the gate code in and swallowed hard as the wrought iron rolled back slowly. I frowned, reached over to grab his hand before he put it back on the steering wheel. "Baby, if you don't want to do this, we can go back to my house. I was just joking."

He shook his head. "I told you, I'm not scared. Jesus, I'm a cancer patient, Jean, some eighties movie revenge scheme isn't enough to upset my delicate constitution. I just don't know if this is right."

"You've obviously never met Mikasa Ackerman," I barked out a laugh, clicking my seatbelt free as we pulled up across the street from her driveway.

"Is it there?" Eren asked, voice practically dripping anticipation as I climbed out of the van and walked around to help him out, letting him grab my arm so I could guide him to the edge of the driveway.

"Oh, it's there," I said.

"I can't believe I'm enabling this," Marco sighed, handing me one of the egg cartons.

Mikasa drove a high school boy's wet dream of a red Corvette, payed for with Daddy's good fortune in the stock exchange and kept waxed to an absolute glimmer. She'd never even let Eren within a foot of the steering wheel, something that had been the subject of much whining throughout their relationship. And there it sat like a gleaming ruby in the crown of capitalism on the even pavement of her driveway, unguarded and vulnerable. My inner super hero nodded approvingly.

I popped the styrofoam container open and pressed an egg into Eren's open palm, pivoting his shoulders until he was lined up properly. "Okay, aim left."

"My left or yours?" Eren frowned, his head darting back and forth like he was trying to look for his target.

"Your left, about twenty degrees."

He nodded and pulled his arm back in a perfect pitching stance - he'd played baseball before his cancer decided to rear its ugly head in his other eye at thirteen - letting out a vicious snarl as he snapped forward and let the egg fly.

It missed the car by five feet and landed in the yard with a splatter.

"Too far left," I cackled, handing him another egg and not missing the way Marco was biting back laughter of his own. "Try again."

The pitch went even wider, hit the fence with a wet crack.

"I said that was too far left, what are you, blind?!" I howled, dodging the swipe he took at me with his cane and pressing another egg into his hand.

"Don't be a dick, Jean," Marco said softly, nudging my shoulder with his. "Dollar in the jar."

"I had to ask my boyfriend for money to buy eggs so my best friend can try and fail to deface his ex-girlfriend's car. What more proof that I'm a broke motherfucker do you need?"

"You still owe me a dollar," he replied breezily, walking up behind Eren and grabbing his shoulders gently. "Eren, is this okay?"

"Huh? Yeah," Eren mumbled confusedly, moving as Marco adjusted his shoulders and pulled his arm up.

"Okay, now pull straight back and throw straight forward," he nodded, taking a step back.

Eren let the egg fly, and it hit the Corvette's left tail light with a satisfying crunch, yolk splattering upwards across the paint. His head perked up at the sound, a breathless smile blooming instantly on his face. "Did I hit it?!"

"Hell yeah, you did!" Clapping him on the back, I handed him another egg and pulled his arm back the way Marco had done. "Okay, another one, dude, throw it, quick!"

The next egg hit squarely on the back driver's side door, and the car alarm went off with a loud, keening wail. Eren laughed giddily and kept motioning for more eggs, missing a few more times but landing hits on the front window, the trunk, the back hubcap. "Sweet sacks of shit, this feels so good, man, I-"

"WHAT THE _FUCK_?!"

A shrill banshee-shriek of a soprano split the air from the Ackermans' front door, now opened to reveal Mikasa, wrapped in a white chenille bathrobe with wet hair plastered to her head. The alarm had gone off while she was in the shower. She stalked down the driveway with all the force of an oncoming storm, her eyes glinting with unbridled rage as she saw the state of the car. I noted that her gaze skipped entirely over Eren, who was the one with an egg in his hand, settling directly on me. _"You."_

"Very good, Mikasa, you're finally recognizing the little people," I smiled sweetly, patronization dripping from the edges of my lips. "Nice day we're having. Oh, I'm rude. This is my boyfriend Marco, and this is Eren, the poor sap you kicked to the curb and left for dead in a hospital bed. You must have forgotten him, seeing as that's the only excuse for you not even checking to see if he was alive after dumping him on the eve of his surgically-induced blindness."

"What the _hell_ do you think you're doing?" she seethed, the hissing sound morphing into a screech of fury as another egg splattered against her wing mirror.

"We're righting an injustice," I shrugged. "If you're going to be mad at someone, be mad at me. This was entirely my idea."

"You are absolutely _pathetic,_ Kirschtein," she snapped, unable to come any closer than the end of the driveway for fear of getting caught in Eren's unceasing crossfire. "What, is there nothing better for you to do now that your cancer's back besides fuck with people's lives to make you feel better about the fact that yours is going down the toilet?"

I lost my comeback. Marco's eyes narrowed, shoulders tensing instantaneously. Eren stopped mid-throw, mouth gaping open in surprise that she'd stoop that low. My mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, panic slamming into me like a freight train. I'd meant to keep it quiet, and now… More get well soon cards. More whispers in the hallway. More girls I'd known since kindergarten bursting into tears every time I talked in class. "You… how do you…"

"Yeah, that's right," she grinned venomously, satisfied that she'd gained the upper hand. "Everyone knows. Bertholdt and Christa were out for coffee on Tuesday and saw you walking out of Memorial with an IV drip looking half-dead. Bertl texted me, I texted Ymir, and now everyone at Trost High _and _Catholic is talking about how sad it is that you're dying again."

"Go ahead and throw the rest of those eggs, Eren," Marco said, his voice terrifyingly even.

"And I'm not even _starting_ on how sad you are, Eren," she laughed coldly, trying to wipe the congealing egg off the side of her car. "You're a grown-ass man and you're egging someone's car because you're butthurt about getting _dumped_. I always knew you were immature, but this is a new achievement level even for you."

"_I was going blind!"_ Eren shouted, splattering another egg against the car with anguish cracking around the edges of his voice. "I was going blind and I fucking _needed you_ and you _left me_ because you didn't want to be the girl with the fucking disabled boyfriend!"

"You've got no right to-"

"You never loved me at all, did you?! All of that whole year, it was all just bullshit!"

"I told you, I-"

"_Couldn't handle it!"_ he fumed, flinging the last egg. A dull, wet splat rang out across the sterile quiet of the suburban afternoon. A second of silence passed.

And then Mikasa _screamed._

Her whole face was red enough to cook the liquid egg that was running down over it in rivulets, bright yellow clinging to the black tendrils of her damp hair. Her hands were curved into talons, rage shivering down across her rigid limbs as she screeched like some sort of vengeful demon, wiping at her now-sticky cheeks and taking a step towards the three of us. In one terrifying moment, I realized that we were out of ammunition. I not-so-subtly pulled Eren in front of me as a human meat shield, looking hurriedly between Marco and the van.

"Yeah, time to go," Marco nodded, throwing open the door so I could throw Eren into the back seat before hobbling as fast as I could around to the driver's side.

"You _assholes!_" The shrieks followed us all the way down the street, fading away until Mikasa was nothing but a blurry, egg-covered silhouette at the end of the block.

I couldn't find the satisfaction that I'd had at the start.

"Dude, what she said to you… what she _did,_ I can't believe she would…" Eren broke the silence, rubbing a hand down the side of his face. "I didn't think she'd stoop that low, man, I'm so sorry-"

"It's fine," I said numbly, staring out the window, counting the lampposts we passed to quell the impending meltdown starting to roar through my head. Eren knowing was bad enough. Marco knowing was even worse. _Everyone _knowing was… unbearable.

"She had no reason to go and spread shit like that; I don't care how much you hate someone, you don't-"

"It's _fine,_ Eren." My voice cracked. I swore I could hear my own hatefully numbered heartbeats in my ears.

Marco reached down almost reflexively with the hand that wasn't on the steering wheel, twined his fingers up with mine like he knew I was teetering on the edge of my own personal Oblivion and needed something to hold me back. A human being had never been so strong hooked up to twenty-four hour oxygen with a terminal disease. Every law of nature insisted that Marco should be frail and fragile, the last thing someone could use as an anchor. I knew better. The laws of nature could go fuck themselves. He was more solid than any mountain I'd ever seen.

It was a comforting thought, the realization of that solidity. It meant that if and when the worst came to pass, he'd be okay without me. My heartbeat was deafening.

He held my hand all the way back to my house, engine idling in my driveway. "I'm gonna go take Eren home. I'll come back after that, okay?"

"Okay," I nodded, leaning in and kissing his cheek before climbing out of the van. I felt set adrift.

"I love you!" he called out the open window as he backed out of my driveway and took off down the street. I could barely hear him, slapping on a plastic smile and waving my hand tiredly over my head.

One-_two_, one-_two_, one-_two_, one-_two_…

I screwed my eyes shut and pressed a hand to the side of my head as I walked back through my front door, trying to fight the insistent pull of the vertigo. Mom materialized from the kitchen the second the door shut behind me, already fussing. "Where did you go? Where's Marco? Is he talking Eren home? Is he coming back for dinner? You were due for your medicine a half hour ago."

"Yeah," I said vaguely, not really processing it.

One-_two_, one-_two_, one-_two_, one-_two_, one-_two_...

"Jean, sweetie," Mom started, but I lost the rest of it, a vague muddle that was lost as my heartbeat grew louder and louder in my ears, drowning out everything in a world I saw through hazy, bleary-blinking eyes. I wondered when Marco would be back. I felt unsteady without him.

Mom said something else, looked worried. I swayed on my feet.

One-_two_, one-_two_, one-_two_, one… twoonetwoone… two. One…

"Huh. It's skipping. That's weird," I said.

And then I hit the floor, and the world went black.


	16. Chapter 16

Consciousness came in fleeting flashes. My kitchen floor; mom shouting frantically into the phone. The back of an ambulance, beeping monitors, the cool plastic smell of an oxygen mask. A freezing, sterile-white corner of a hospital room cordoned off with flimsy curtains and Marco's fingers braided up with mine.

"Hey," he said, the word a sigh of relief as he reached up and smoothed my hair back.

"Hey," I croaked, throat parched and the entirety of my body aching. "Did I pass out?"

"You went into cardiac defibrillation," Marco said tightly, looking paler than usual as he reached over on the rolling tray beside my bed and handed me a plastic cup of water with the Memorial logo on the side. "I came back to your house and they were putting you in the ambulance. You were sort of in and out of consciousness from what I heard; they just let me back here like five minutes ago."

"This isn't ICU."

"No, but Eren's dad was back here talking to your parents. They went down the hall, I think."

A leaden weight sank into my gut. If Dr. Jaeger was there, that meant it wasn't going to be a one-night stay. It meant tests, it meant re-evaluating my treatment plan. And if Marco was there, it meant him being present to find out just how bad the situation was. My head was still fuzzy, but I was able to process that much, swallowing thickly and trying to work out a resolution. My attempt didn't work out so well.

"Cardiac defibrillation…" I mumbled, slurring a little.

Marco nodded, leaning down and brushing his lips across my knuckles almost contemplatively. "Your heart went out of rhythm. They had to shock it back in sync."

"Yeah, I know what it is," I sighed, finally feeling a burnt sensation on my torso, the distant ache that was the calling card of the electric shock that had no doubt been pressed to my chest. I knew what it was. I knew what it implied. Marco knew the former, but not the latter. There was still a chance to salvage this. "You should go home. Don't worry about me."

"Says the idiot who lived in a waiting room for three days while I was in the ICU," he snorted, shaking his head.

"Marco."

"I'm staying right here, so don't waste your time."

I sighed, gave his hand a little squeeze. He squeezed back and smiled a little, scooting his chair closer to my bed. Under the harsh fluorescent ceiling lights, he was tired and worried and beautiful and stubborn as all hell. I loved him.

We had a few golden moments of peace and quiet pending the incoming shitstorm, made the best of them that we could despite the acrid disinfectant smell in the air and the distant chorus of medical machinery led by the metronome of the heart monitor they had me hooked up to. By the time my parents came back in with Dr. Jaeger in tow, Marco had crawled up onto the uncomfortable mattress beside me, pulled me against the graceful curve of his body as he murmured formless half-whispers into my hair. I felt the loss all the way at the core of me as he sat up quickly and shuffled back to his chair, blushing and stammering when he had to disentangle all of my tubes and wires from his oxygen line. There was a sort of symbolism in it that made me very uneasy, but I wasn't lucid enough to process it.

Mom was crying. Big surprise. One look at the IV and heart monitor and my fingers still twined up with Marco's was enough the shatter her composure, some mix of grief and relief making her crumple into a seated position on the edge of the bed, soft hands pressed to my feverish cheeks. "Oh, sweetie."

"I'm fine, Mom," I lied tiredly. My whole body ached and I could feel every labored heartbeat against my ribs. She didn't need to know that. First rule of Cancer Kid Code.

Even Dad looked more drawn and tightly-laced than usual, walking over and settling a hand on my shoulder. "How are you feeling, champ?"

"Kind of confused, still," I admitted, leaning back into the pillows behind me. The presence of so many people was exhausting. "Everything's fuzzy. Marco tried to bring me up to speed, but I'm not exactly sure what happened."

"You took about three steps into the house and then went straight to the floor," Mom sniffed, wiping at her eyes and breathing out shakily. "I didn't know what… I was so scared, I just called 911 and by the time the paramedics go there you were sort of half-conscious…"

"And then I pulled up to an ambulance outside your house and proceeded to freak out," Marco finished the story, grabbing my hand again with a weary half-grin. "Suffice to say that you scared the living daylights out of everyone involved. I'd say your flair for the dramatic is at least a twenty dollar in the jar offense."

I laughed tiredly, gave his hand a little squeeze. The fact that I was responsive at all seemed to make him relax. I wished I could say the same for the other people in the room. Mom looked on the verge of tears again, Dad looked vaguely sick, and Dr. Jaeger just looked tired and disappointed, taking his glasses off and cleaning them with the sleeve of his lab coat.

"I know that you're probably pretty exhausted, Jean, but I'd like to run some tests and keep you overnight for observation," he muttered, looking at something on his clipboard to avoid meeting my eyes. We both knew the score, Dr. Jaeger and I, and something about the idea of us being in the room with people who didn't obviously made us both uncomfortable.

"PET scan?" I groaned.

"And an MRI."

"Awesome." Even with the fatigue and lingering pain tugging at my bones, I still managed a somewhat faltering plastic smile, feeling like every cell in my body was sinking. "Just the way I wanted to end my day."

I wasn't all that hungry, which made the PET scan a little more bearable, but the MRI wasn't fun by any stretch of the imagination. The machine was tight and claustrophobic and _loud,_ like a chorus of hammers was beating on the metal arced over my body. By the time the scan was over, I had a roaring headache, barely even strong enough to make it back to the wheelchair they'd used to bring me up to Diagnostics, heart pounding against my ribcage with the effort.

Marco was waiting in the hallway outside, wheeling his oxygen tank back and forth just to fill the sterile silence with its creaking. I crossed my arms and raised an eyebrow at him, made a very concerted effort to look like I wasn't dying. That was surprisingly harder than it sounded. "It's late. Go home."

"I'm not going to-"

"You need to go home and take care of yourself and take your meds and sleep with your BiPAP and not be dumb about this," I cut him off, the state of how awful I felt making me snappier than usual. "You running yourself into the ground isn't going to make me get better any faster. I'm going to go back to my room and sleep. You don't need to prove that you're a good boyfriend by sitting there and watching me snore for twelve hours, all right? Go home."

The pain in my chest was unbearable. I looked at him and smiled.

Marco looked like he was going to say something, but seemed to think better of it at the last second, sighing and leaning down to press his lips fleetingly to mine. "I love you. Okay?"

"Okay. I love you too," I smiled again, my next heartbeat like a sledgehammer to the sternum. He saw me wince. He didn't say anything about it.

Marco went home, and my hospital room felt even more empty and soulless without him in it. Mom and Dad drifted in and out all night, sleeping in shifts in the chair next to my bed. But despite how exhausted I was, sleep wouldn't come. 4AM found me watching infomercials on the grainy TV mounted to the wall across the room, thumb swiping contemplatively across my phone screen. My head was a mess, an impending full system failure stressing every synapse until even _thinking_ hurt. I felt like a pressure cooker. A little more heat, another fault in my construction, and _boom._

I needed to talk to someone. Marco and Eren were asleep. Mom and Dad were somewhere outside my room and had never been a real option where honesty was concerned anyway.

It was 9AM in Paris. I punched up my skype app and typed an email address into the search bar, hit the 'video call' button.

Hange's face popped up on my screen after three or four rings, confused until she saw who it was. She had a big, shamelessly toothy smile that was pretty in its own sort of way. "Oh, hello, Jean! Amelie, _Spatzi,_ come see who's on the computer!"

"You might want to keep Amelie out of this, actually," I sighed, tilting my phone so Hange could see my IV stand and PICC line, telling her enough of the situation without saying anything that Amelie could hear. She pursed her lips and nodded gravely, turning away from her webcam and saying something in rapid-fire French to Amelie, who replied with a little giggle before the sound of running feet faded out of the background. Hange waited for another few seconds, listening carefully before turning her attention back to me. "Are you all right?"

"As all right as I can be at the moment," I shrugged, looking over the top of my phone and watching the rhythmic spikes on my heart monitor. "Not that I'm not happy to see you, but is Levi around? I need to talk to him."

"I think he's still in bed; let me check," she muttered, leaning forward to pick her laptop up. With the screen tilted, I could see that she was wearing a thin cotton nightgown and horrifyingly fluffy slippers, a short satin robe slumping off her shoulder.

I blinked, the slow beginnings of a knowing grin settling on my lips. "Did you stay the night at Levi's?"

Hange went bright red, clearing her throat. "I… my ex and I shared the rent on our apartment, and I couldn't afford it myself. I got evicted last week, so Levi told me we could extend my job to a live-in position. It's been a bit of a roller coaster around here lately."

The camera shook as Hange carried her laptop upstairs, little flashes of 12 Rue Saint-Jean skittering across my phone screen, a cracked door to what looked like the pink, glittery haven of a five-year-old girl's bedroom, Archie the Corgi running across the hall with a rawhide bone in his mouth. Another jumble as she shifted her hold on the computer to open a door at the end of the hall, exposing an immaculately neat bedroom save for the rumpled gray blankets on the bed and a slowly stirring Levi curled up on one side.

"C'mere," he mumbled, half-conscious and almost inaudible to the microphone on Hange's computer. "It's cold, and I-"

"Jean's on the computer for you," she cut him off hurriedly.

Levi cursed under his breath and sat up, the blankets falling down into his lap. Raking a hand through his hair, he reached up and grabbed the laptop. The other side of the bed was unmade, a dent in the pillows.

"You lying, sly old dog," I smirked after I heard Hange leave the room. "You just didn't want me to win the bet."

"It's a damn sight more complicated than that, you little-" he growled, pausing when he noticed the neckline of my hospital gown visible in my camera and the background of my surroundings. "Are you okay?"

"I righted an injustice like you suggested, and it landed me in the hospital," I replied wryly, leaning back into the stiff hospital mattress. "It would seem that my heart is shitting out on me."

Levi's eyes widened slightly, a sharp exhalation rattling through the laptop's crappy built-in microphone. "What the hell did you do?"

"Egged someone's car, found out that said someone told everyone at my school that I'm Cancer Kirschtein again, had a breakdown, ran away, went home and collapsed into cardiac defibrillation."

"Jesus," he huffed, shaking his head. "Well at any rate, I'm glad they've got you sorted out."

"You know that them having me sorted out is temporary just as well as I do," I said flatly, looking up to make sure my parents weren't in the doorway. "And my legacy problem is still not solved."

"Why are you so obsessed with your legacy?" Levi asked.

"Because I don't want to die with nothing to show for it, okay?!" I snapped, the reality of it hitting home like a baseball bat to the stomach. "I'm eighteen years old and I've done nothing with my life and my life is about to be over. I want something that someone can hold up and say 'This is what he did.' Maybe that's stupid, but I'm not going to be able to make peace with the absolute _bullshit _way I'm going out until I can have something decent to leave behind."

Levi's lips pressed into a thin line. "You've been needing to rage to someone about this for a while, huh?"

My next breath came out choked and shaky as I nodded. "I just… I get that I'm not a great person, okay, but I deserve better than this. No one deserves to fade out. Like, goddamn, if I'm going out, I want it to be _something,_ you know? I deserve my fucking blaze of glory!"

I was barely holding it together by that point, blinking the liquid fire out of my eyes as my heart monitor spiked faster and my chest began to ache with the exertion of holding back sobs. The hand that wasn't holding my phone clenched white-knuckled in my lap, an endless loop of the horrible facts running through my head. A cookie-cutter obituary with no great accolades to tell. A memorial page in the backs of yearbooks that would sit on shelves and collect dust as my classmates went on to bigger and better things. A rock in a cemetery that would see flowers every year on my birthday until my parents couldn't put them there anymore, and then an eternity of bare stone, eroding and sinking into the ground until even the letters would fade to illegibility and Jean Kirschtein would be smeared out of the world's memory forever.

"You're eighteen years old and dying," Levi said flatly, his expression not changing. "What do you have to give the world?"

"Nothing," I spat, wishing I had the energy to punch something, break something, go on an Eren-level tirade and scream about how unfair it all was.

"Wrong." A moment of silence passed as I dragged my eyes up to the screen and met his gaze across thousands of miles, searching for the joke and not finding it. "You have what every human has. You have your story."

Hot flames of frustration licked along the linings of my veins, mixing with the IV drugs into some sort of toxic cocktail. "Yeah, and what the fuck am I supposed to do with that?"

"That's your call," Levi shrugged, looking at something off-camera. "Isn't it like 4:30 there? Christ, kid, sleep."

"Yeah, I probably should," I sighed. The infomercial on the TV had gone from makeup to a home workout system. "Sorry for Skyping you while you were asleep and yelling at you first thing in the morning. It's just that I can't talk to my parents, and I-"

"And you don't want to talk to Marco about it. I get it. I've been on the receiving end of someone who doesn't want to burden the person they love with their mental lapses brought on by dying, remember? But if you're looking for honesty, he probably _wants _you to talk to him. You keep forgetting that he's been in the same situation longer than you have."

"Noted," I replied curtly.

"Hang in there, you little shit," Levi said, his fingers tracing across the laptop's trackpad. "And keep in touch. Let me know how that legacy search goes."

The call ended. I dropped my phone on the rolling tray beside my bed and leaned back into the pillows again, starting at the ceiling until the exhaustion of my body finally overcame my livewire mind, and I slept.

Too early for my taste, my test results came back. I couldn't really tell the difference from the initial PET scan. There were still bright lights throughout my body, prettily poisonous and bent on destruction, but Dr. Jaeger seemed to spot the changes that I couldn't, frowning at the screen of the hospital-issued laptop as my parents hovered beside my bed and he tried and failed to find a way to sugar coat it.

"I don't really know how to say this, other than that the treatment's not working," he sighed, and Mom started sniffling practically on cue. I swallowed heavily, feeling disconnected from my body as he continued. "Or rather, the treatment's not working fast enough to catch up to the cancer. We'll have to get more aggressive with the chemo, maybe start radiation as well. It's getting worse up around the heart, which is why you had your incident in the first place, Jean."

Radiation. Not only would I be dealing with feeling sick and exhausted and fragile all the time, now my skin would be red and blistered, every light touch like a burn with a cattle brand. More aggressive chemo meant stronger poison and longer periods of exposure. I felt like everything in me was sinking, the grim realization dawning on me as the flat statement left my lips. "I'm not going to be able to do anything."

"Well, you certainly won't be going back to school in the fall," Dr. Jaeger nodded solemnly, looking at the scans again. "And we don't want you to engage in unneeded physical activity that could put strain on your heart. We might even need to consider maybe restricting your mobility to a wheelchair-"

"Absolutely not."

"Jean," Mom scolded, giving me a reprimanding look. That's right, Jean, the grown-ups are talking. Let us dictate what's left of your life. Your input is not required or even wanted.

Fuck that.

"I've spent enough time in wheelchairs," I said stubbornly, nodding down at where my prosthetic was resting against the side of my bed. "I'm not doing it again unless I absolutely have to. You want me to take it easy, I'll take it easy, but I'll take it easy while walking."

"Fair enough," Dr. Jaeger nodded, jotting something down on my chart. "I'm going to go ahead and discharge you. Go home and rest. I mean _rest,_ Jean, as in don't be going on adventures. Just be a homebody for a few days, we'll get your new treatment regimen sorted out, and we'll keep fighting this, all right?"

"Yeah," I nodded.

Before, I had always sort of romanticized the idea of fighting a losing battle. Now it just made me feel indescribably tired.

I went home and spent the rest of the day sulking. Eren texted me. I turned my phone off. Watched _Fight Club_ two or three times, sat on my bed with my sketchbook and tried to lose myself in my better recent memories; the lights of Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower, Marco in his blue scarf, Amelie peeking out from behind a door. Time passed in a sluggish crawl. This was my life now, or at least what was left of it.

Dinner came and went. I wasn't hungry. The sun set outside the sliding glass doors on the other side of my room, plunging it into darkness save for the blueish glow of my TV.

"_You are not a beautiful, unique snowflake,"_ Brad Pitt said on screen.

"I'm starting to figure that out," I said.

The door opened, yellow light slanting down from upstairs. I braced myself for Mom to come down with the intent of force-feeding me, but the second I heard the thud-creak, thud-creak of an oxygen tank on the steps I perked up, reaching over to turn on my lamp and putting my sketchbook aside.

Marco smiled breathlessly at me after he made it downstairs, holding up a six-pack of Jones Green Apple soda, something I was sure I'd only told him once was my favorite, and a handful of slim cardboard boxes. "Why is your phone off?"

"I didn't feel like talking to people," I shrugged, hitting the mute button on my remote and looking wearily up at him. "I'm glad you stopped by, though. I probably would have just stayed down here and wallowed all night."

"No wallowing allowed," he smiled softly, leaning over and kissing the top of my head. "Come on, the fireworks are starting soon."

"What?" I said.

"It's the Fourth of July, you dweeb," Marco rolled his eyes, shaking the boxes in his hand in reference. Sparklers. "Come on, you live like two blocks from the park, you should have a great view from your yard."

For the part of me that was grateful to him for trying to make me feel better, there was an equal and opposite part that just wanted to collapse and curl into him and let myself break. There was yet another part that wanted to push him as far away as I could in some doomed effort to get him away from my morbid gravity, keep him from the fallout of the impending black hole growing in my chest. I'd always had a bit of a conflict of interests when it came to Marco, but now he was the subject of a war in me. I waved a white flag and let him take my hand, pulling me out into the back yard beyond the sliding door.

We sat with our backs against the chain link fence, cracking open our sodas as the first sharp whistle and plume of sparks rose from the direction of the park, shattering into a downpour of lights over our heads. Marco's lips twitched into a little smirk, the fireworks casting odd shadows across the freckled planes of his face as he raised his bottle in my direction. "To 'Murrica?"

"To 'Murrica," I snorted, clinking my bottle against his and taking a long sip before setting it down and tearing open the box of sparklers. "Okay, let's get this party started."

"Oh crap, I don't have a lighter," he muttered, looking much sadder than he should have over a box of useless sparklers.

"It's okay, I've got one," I nodded, reaching into the pocket of my jeans that held my pack of cigarettes and pulling out a cheap plastic Bic from a gas station counter.

Marco blinked at me. "I thought you said you've never lit one."

"I haven't," I told him, taking a minute to pop a Marlboro between my lips before flicking the lighter to life and setting one of the sparklers aflame. "It's part of that exercise in power I told you about. I have the thing that can make the cigarette deadly right in my pocket, but I never use it."

"You're lucky I don't have the jar with me," he sighed, reaching over to light his sparkler off of mine and pressing a kiss to the ridge of my cheekbone. "Smile."

I did.

Marco shook his head. "Not that one. Your real one."

My heart ached for more reasons than one. "I don't have much to smile about right now, if we're being honest."

"I love you," he said. I smiled, and so did he, reaching down and giving my hand a solid squeeze. "There we go. That's the one."

"They're cranking up my chemo treatments and adding radiation," I said softly after a long stretch of silence, half-praying that he wouldn't hear it over the loud bangs of the fireworks arching rainbow lights across the sky.

"I know. Your mom told me."

"I'm going to be very boring for the next few months. Lots of sleeping and puking and video games," I warned him.

"That's okay," Marco nodded, leaning over and resting his head on my shoulder. "I'd take your boring over anyone else's exciting."

"And they've got me off physical activity because my heart's being a jerk, so no more sex."

"Oh, well, that might be a deal breaker," he said, sounding so completely serious that I had to look down to see that he was grinning, breaking into a soft laugh as the sparkler in his hand burnt out and he leaned up to kiss me. "Kidding. God, the look on your face, though."

"Tch, dork," I rolled my eyes, taking the cigarette out of my mouth long enough for a swig of soda.

The big finale of the fireworks show was starting, whistles and bangs and avalanches of sparks that outshone the stars, blanketing the sky with light, their beauty born and dying in seconds as the ashes fell back to earth. From the park, I could hear a Sousa march playing over the crackly PA system, little kids screeching happily between explosions. Marco was warm and steady against me. A white burst of light erupted overhead, illuminating his serene smile, and I thought to myself that if this was the last thing I ever saw, it would be enough.

I felt peaceful. It was a nice change.

"Miniature supernovas," Marco said quietly, his thumb brushing over my knuckles. "They burn out so fast."

"Yeah, but they sure are pretty," I hummed.

He kissed me again, slow and deep as the little Oblivions overhead faded to black and the night grew silent.

I sat awake in my room for a long time after Marco went home, just thinking, processing everything instead of letting it drown me. I thought back to the hospital, to Levi's impassive face on my phone screen.

_I want something that someone can hold up and say 'This is what he did,' _I'd told him.

_You're eighteen years old and dying. What do you have to give the world?_

_Nothing._

_Wrong. You have your story._

I reached over and grabbed my laptop, opened up a new document in my word processor. Maybe legacies could be born like stars, soft and silent until they weren't anymore.


	17. Chapter 17

Six months became five.

Five months became me sitting in my room and listening to the seven-in-the-morning rumble of the school bus as it worked its way down my street, became long days of staring at my laptop screen and typing until my fingers ached. Marco was back in classes now, Eren was starting our senior year without me, and I was so lonely during those empty hours of unviewed text messages and silence that I could hardly stand it.

Five months was me curled up in the center of my bed in a futile effort to ride out the pain, the more aggressive chemo making me feel like my insides were on fire for every second of my week-and-a-half exposure periods. I held onto my plastic smile for Mom and Dad, but I no longer had the strength to do it for anyone else. One afternoon, Marco reached over to rub my back while I was leaned over the trash can beside my bed, and the simple touch pulled a half-scream out of my throat because the point of contact was the inflamed patch of skin where I'd been getting radiation treatments on my off-days from chemo.

He looked at me like I was made of glass after that. I hated it.

Five months became four.

Four months became the harrowing realization that Marco didn't just look at me like I was made of glass; he realized the inevitable fact that I actually was. He stopped coming by the house without explicit spoken permission from me after he showed up with a movie after class one day and walked down to the basement to find me strung-out on meds and mumbling in a language of my own creation. I had to hear about the incident from Mom. I didn't remember it.

Four months was the poison they pumped into my body at Memorial twice a month taking more toll on my body than it ever had before, ripping pounds off like tree branches in a storm until my wrists stuck out like atrophied mountains on the planes of my arms and every single pair of jeans I owned had to be held up with a belt with an extra hole poked in it. It was standing in front of my bathroom mirror and pulling a hand through my hair, my palm full of brittle blonde strands when I looked down at it. The chemo drug was only supposed to spare your hair at a normal dosage, and I was on enough for two people. I had always had thick, unruly hair, and it didn't fall out in clumps, but it thinned and shedded like I was some sort of sickly Pomeranian. It was feeling something empty and cavernous open up in me when I realized that Marco never ran his fingers through my hair anymore when I lay with my head in his lap while he played his way abysmally through the rest of the Mass Effect series.

I remembered when Marco had been the fragile one. It seemed like a lifetime ago. He started saying every goodbye like he might not get to say another one. I tried to pretend I didn't notice.

Four months became three.

Four months became doctor's appointments with disappointing results, a g-tube surgically inserted into my abdomen since I could no longer be trusted to take my medication or meals without throwing them right back up. Medicine and nutrients went in through a syringe. I started forgetting what real food tasted like.

I tried to downplay the fact that my plate was empty as I sat and plastic-smiled my way through my parents having Dr. and Mrs. Jaeger over for dinner as a thank-you for all the time and effort he'd been putting into keeping my pathetic husk of a body breathing, sat up straight and nodded politely when I was addressed. Yes, I'm feeling fine. The side effects aren't so bad. Why, no, I wouldn't say that I'm miserable.

I had a box full of get-well cards from my classmates in my room. Looking at them made me ill. I wondered if that was how Levi had felt staring at all those piles of _Infinity Vault _fanmail.

"I don't mean to be rude, but I'm kind of tired," I muttered as I felt my resolve start to weaken, smile and stomach faltering as I sat there and watched the grown-ups act like the fact that I was still clinging to life by bloody, ragged fingernails was some sort of cause for celebration. Forget that coming upstairs had been an Olympic marathon or that I'd learned how to swallow seven pills at once or that I'd gotten so used to constant pain that it almost felt like normalcy. We were having a goddamned party because my diseased heart was still managing a somewhat steady beat. The idea was so morbid that even I couldn't find any irony or humor in it.

"Go to bed, sweetie," Mom nodded, petting my hair down as she walked past with dessert, brushing the strands that were now stuck between her fingers off on her apron. "You can go ahead and sleep; I'll come down and wake you up when it's time for your meds."

I got up and walked out of the dining room, had the basement door open before the hushed mumble of a conversation I wasn't supposed to hear stopped me from going downstairs and collapsing into bed. Frowning, I flattened myself against the wall and shuffled back towards the kitchen, careful to make sure my prosthetic didn't click or creak and give my presence away.

"-just being so brave," I was able to make out the tail end of Mom's sentence, my ear pressed to the swinging door between the kitchen and dining room. She sounded like she was about to cry. "But I know he feels worse than he lets on. He has to."

"I won't disagree with you," Dr. Jaeger muttered, sounding a little awkward. "He's on a level of treatment that would kill a child or an elderly person. The fact that he's up and about at all is a testament to his willpower."

"But this is all worth it, right?" Dad piped up.

Mom sniffed, and the space of silence made me envision her nodding tearfully. "If it sends him into remission for good this time, it's got to be. That's going to happen, right?"

Dr. Jaeger sighed, and I felt my stomach drop into my shoes, mouthing _don't you dare_ silently against the smooth wood of the door. I was half-tempted to burst back in claiming I'd forgotten something just to stop the conversation, but there was nothing in the dining room that I could use as an accessory to that claim, and before I could think of some other course of action, he was dropping the bomb I'd been trying to shield my parents from with everything I had left. "Jean is very sick. And the chemo and radiation are slowing the growth marginally, yes, but at what cost? He's barely mobile, he's on a g-tube, he sleeps about sixteen hours a day, and the treatment isn't going to get any easier for him. I hate to be the one to tell you this, Adele, but… it might be time to start making him comfortable."

I didn't stick around long enough to listen to my mother break down sobbing, to the meltdown or argument or whatever ensued after my careful efforts at maintaining a charade of _okay_ got shot to hell. Instead, I blinked slowly and made my way downstairs, sat on my bed and stared up at the ceiling.

Dr. Jaeger had been right, of course. If the cancer didn't kill me, the treatment would, and I'd die as a pale, wasted shadow of myself. I could barely remember the old me as it was. The Jean who'd gone headfirst into the Bodts' koi pond, who'd kissed his great cosmic love on top of the Eiffel Tower, who'd reveled in something as simple as the metaphor wrapped up in a cigarette, he seemed already dead, and I was just the ghost he left behind.

I wondered if I was still that person, if I could conjure him up with enough effort. Lips pursing, I forced myself to fight the fatigue and the odd, feverish feeling humming in the back of my head long enough to get up and grab my jacket from where it was hanging off the corner of my bookshelf, dig around in my pocket for my pack of Marlboro Reds. They were gone.

"You've got to be shitting me," I hissed, digging through the other pocket and even checking the jeans I'd worn the previous day for good measure. The cigarettes were nowhere to be found. Maybe it was just the medication, but I took their absence harder than I should have. It felt like that last piece of me was missing, like I'd finally morphed into one of the sad, fading faces that I'd pitied on that all-important day I'd agreed to go to Support Group with Eren.

The thought was so repulsive that I physically shuddered, rooted to my bedroom floor for a moment before a paroxysm of pure, stubborn rage drove my arm forward, snatching my car keys off the surface of my desk. Maybe it was time to make me comfortable, but I damn well wasn't ready to be comfortable yet.

I knew that I'd made a stupid decision as soon as I got in my car, the vertigo hitting me hard for a few minutes before I gritted my teeth and lurched out into the street, the fact that I hadn't driven in over a month making my technique even worse than usual. I was used to feeling sick, but the sensation pulling at my head and stomach growing stronger by the minute was something different, something hot and prickly in comparison the the chemo's cold scrape against my insides. By the time I saw the sign for the gas station outside my development gleaming through the empty night around it, my vision was blurred and wavering.

The fact that I managed to get my car in park before my stomach lurched and my body curled in on itself was nothing short of a miracle, a sharp blaze of pain shooting across the place where my g-tube pressed against my shirt. I clapped a hand over my mouth and coughed wetly, my palm stained sticky-bright crimson in the dim light from the gas station when I pulled it away. A string of impressive profanity went through my head, but the only thing I was capable of getting out was a pained, confused groan, feeling like I was in a fever dream as I looked at the clock on my dashboard. Had I missed my meds? Was that what this was? Struggling for full breaths, I reached over into my backpack in the passenger seat to grab the plastic syringe, but my hands were shaking too badly for me to do anything. I struggled with it for a few minutes before I was hacking up blood again, dizzy and aching as the front of my shirt stuck warmly against my chest.

There was no way I could drive home, not when I couldn't see clearly beyond a foot in front of my nose and I was shaking so hard that my teeth were chattering audibly. My parents didn't know that I was gone; calling them would end in disaster. My brain seemed sluggish and fuzzy, latching onto the first instinct I had and somehow piloting me into calling up the voice command on my phone since my hands were too jittery to navigate the screen. "Call Marco."

Ring. Pause. Ring. Pause.

"Come on, babe," I groaned, resting my forehead against the steering wheel.

Ring. Click. "Hello?"

His voice was tight and frightened, but it sounded like heaven regardless. I exhaled shakily. "Marco."

"Oh, thank God. Hi. I love you," he sighed, sounding relieved, like he'd expected to hear someone else on the other end of the line.

"I love you too, but I-" My stomach heaved again, more blood, darker red and scarier, but maybe that was just because of the fact that I knew I only had so much in me to lose. "I need your help. I know it's late, but can you please just come to the 7-11 over by Trost High? I think I've got something fucked up with my g-tube and I can't…"

A sudden flash of pain stole my train of thought, but apparently Marco had heard enough, car keys jingling on the other end of the line alongside wheezing, somewhat-panicked breaths. "I'll be there in five. I love you."

"Love you too," I slurred, trying to spit the taste of copper out of my mouth.

"Jean? I mean it. I love you. So much."

"I heard you the first time, dork," I snorted, the pain from the motion pulling a pained moan out of the center of my chest a split second before Marco hung up the phone. I was sure he'd heard it. What little of my mental faculties that remained made me feel absolutely horrible for it. I sat there wracked with agony and guilt until Karma's minivan screeched to a halt beside my car, a pajama-clad Marco hauling his oxygen tank out onto the concrete and yanking my passenger door open.

See, I'd always had this assumption that Marco was stronger than he looked. He may have been sweet and kind and like a little slice of starshine some down to earth, but there was something solid in him that couldn't be ignored, and I'd just accepted it, taken it for what it was. I'd never realized the extent. I'd never realized until I watched him crawl into a bloodstained Camry and pull a fragile almost-corpse into his arms without so much as a flinch that Marco was made of steel.

Made. Of. Steel.

"Oh, Jean," he breathed, sounding so sad and so lost, and I wished that I had never picked up my phone, had never dragged him into this. "What happened?"

"I just wanted cigarettes," I told him, my voice cracking before I coughed up another mouthful of blood, hot carmine clinging to my lips and making them stick as I spoke. "I couldn't find them at my house, and I just… I wanted to _do_ something, you know? I don't want this. I don't want it to be like this. But I felt really bad on the way over and I think something's wrong with my g-tube, I have the medicine, but I can't…"

"I'm calling 9-1-1," Marco said, reaching for his phone.

"No," I wheezed, grabbing his arm, leaving a bloody handprint across his skin. "I snuck out. My parents will flip their shit, I… just look at it, please. Don't call an ambulance; I don't want to go back to the hospital."

He pursed his lips and lifted up the hem of my t-shirt. The skin around the g-tube was red and inflamed, but I couldn't see well enough to tell anything beyond that. It must have been bad, though, because Marco sucked in a breath and put the shirt back down, a hand coming up to cradle my jaw. "This looks infected or like it's bleeding internally or something, Jean. I can't fix this. I'm sorry, baby, I have to call someone."

I wished that I had the fortitude to put on a plastic smile for him, to laugh and joke and tell him that it was okay, that the hospital could use some attractive people at any rate. I couldn't. All I could do was just lay there against his chest as he swiped at his phone, trembling and trying to bite back the wobble in my voice. "I shouldn't have called you."

"Yes you should have; I'm so glad you called me, who knows what could have-"

"I shouldn't have called you," I said again, a sob ripping up through my throat and sending a stab of pain all through my torso. And the floodgates broke. I left rusty tear stains all over the front of Marco's ridiculously oversized Grateful Dead shirt, the one he'd been wearing when I realized I was in love with him. It felt like defiling something sacred, like cancer was growing into every crevice in the entity of us and reducing it to broken pieces. The tremors were so bad that he could barely hold onto me, mumbling something hurriedly into his phone as I choked out the bloody confession I'd been holding back for the past month. "I hate this. I hate being like this. I hate this I hate myself why can't I just fucking _die_ already I shouldn't have called you-"

"Shut up." I'd never heard Marco sound so flat, so resolute, like thunder even though his voice was quiet. He shoved his phone in his pocket and held my face between his hands, forcing me to look at him, at how every single feature was set and determined. "Shut up. You don't get to leave me."

I laughed, a gurgling, bloody sound that was a ghost of its old self, just like the rest of me. "That's not your call to make."

"The hell it isn't," he said. My eyelids fluttered, vision swimming again, and he brushed his thumb across my cheekbone, his hold not softening. "Hey, no. Stay with me. Jean, look at me. _You don't get to leave me._"

His only answer was a weak little cough, another bloodstain that would probably never come out of his shirt. I could hear sirens in the background, but I could also hear my heart in my ears again, slow and laborsome. Marco had been saying each goodbye like his last for weeks, and I'd never given any thought of what I wanted my last goodbye to him to be. I'd always sort of known.

I reached up with one trembling hand and pressed it against his cheek, smiling weakly. "Okay."

He let out something that might have been a laugh or a sob, pressing his lips to my forehead. "Okay?"

"Okay," I nodded. I held his hand up until the moment they put me in the back of the ambulance, whispered it again before the doors closed. "Okay."

My g-tube, as it turned out, had been damaged since its insertion, a fluke that led to subsequent infection and internal bleeding. I found this out after the antibiotics dripping through my PICC line had healed me to the point of lucidity again. Three days in the ICU. This was all a little too familiar.

Dr. Jaeger came in to check on me after I was able to sit up in bed again, setting his clipboard down on the edge of the bed as he looked from my parents to me with an absolutely exhausted look on his face. "All right, we've got some decisions to make."

"They can always put in another g-tube after he heals up," Mom interjected, looking sort of frantically hopeful. "I mean, we're aware that it will push back the next round of chemo, but-"

"We're stopping the chemo," I said before I could stop myself, very pointedly not looking her in the eye.

Her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, the final realization slowly dawning on her. "Jean. Jean, think about what you're saying."

"I know exactly what I'm saying," I told her, feeling hideously like I was about to start crying. No, scratch that, I _did_ start crying, blinking back the heat in my eyes as I reached down and grabbed her hand, squeezed as hard as I was strong enough to. "I can't do this anymore, Mom."

The pain meds I was on were pretty strong, so a lot of it was a blur after that. A lot of crying. My signature on a form. A strange sort of peace as they wheeled me out of ICU and into a run-of-the-mill room to finish recovering. I slept for a long time. When I woke up, there was a vase of hyacinths and a new pack of Marlboro Reds sitting on my bedside table. I placed one between my teeth and actually managed a smile, a certain peace in the knowledge that maybe my old self wasn't gone after all. At least not yet.

That peace lasted for the approximately one minute before Eren came clacking angrily through my door with his cane swinging wildly, murder etched into his features. "What the _fuck_ were you thinking?!"

"I'm sorry, young man, you must have the wrong room," I said, putting on my best old lady voice as a latch-ditch escape effort.

"Oh my God, I'm so sor- wait. Dammit, Jean!"

I threw my head back and laughed, holding my cigarette between my fingers and looking over at him. "Sorry, I had to try."

"You're an idiot," Eren seethed, stalking back and forth at the foot of my bed and bumping arbitrarily into furniture. "You're a complete idiot. What made you think it was okay to pull that shit?! Why would you sneak out in the middle of the night when you're already sick and your parents have no idea where you are, why would you-"

"I just wanted to do something for myself," I cut him off.

"YOU'RE _FUCKING _DYING, YOU DON'T GET TO DO THINGS FOR YOURSELF ANYMORE."

Silence fell between us like flipping a switch, my mouth gaping slightly before I sighed and leaned back into the uncomfortable pillows. "How long have you known?"

"I've been working my way up to opening my eyes - shut the _fuck _up - for a few weeks now, but the fact that I was just down in Oncology and heard the nurses talking about how you weren't coming back kind of brought it home," he muttered, kicking at nothing and somehow managing to convey a glare even from behind his Ray-Bans.

"Don't tell Marco," was all I said.

Eren went from angry to irate in a second flat, smacking his cane against the wall loudly. "You know what, _fuck you!_ I get that Marco's your be-all-end-all now and everything, but he's not the only person that's going to lose you, you asshole! So stop acting like he's the only one you've got to protect! You're my best friend; I'm losing you too, so_ fuck you_ for putting that on me!"

I blinked at him. "I'm sorry."

"No, shut up! I know I'm a selfish prick, but I'm fucking upset about this! Marco knows you're dying, you utter _fucking_ moron! Marco's been dying for years; he knows the symptoms, and I'm not going to tell you how many times the poor guy has sat on my couch and fucking _sobbed_ because he doesn't want to burden you with the fact that he's a wreck about all of this!" Eren threw his cane down with a wail of rage, and I half-expected him to stomp it into pieces like he had with my soccer trophies what felt like a million years ago. "And yeah, you're dying, that's shitty, but it's shitty for him too! And it's _really_ shitty for me. You'll be long gone by the time Marco finally bites it, and I'm gonna have to fucking go to both your funerals, so the _least _you can do is acknowledge that I'm more than just another buffer to protect your boyfriend from a truth he already knows!"

Guilt hit me like a physical blow to the chest, fists balling up in the blankets. Levi had called me out on being a selfish piece of shit all the way back in Paris, and I hadn't believed him. Listening to Eren rage at me made me feel horrible, and the fact that a spike of worry pulled at me the second he mentioned Marco being less than okay made me feel even worse. I'd never even considered that fact that my death would wreck Eren too. I'd been leaning so heavily on him and Marco for emotional stability that I'd never thought about either of them doing what I'd been doing for so long, slapping on their plastic smiles and holding each other up while I wasn't around.

"I'm a piece of shit," I finally sighed, raking a hand through my hair. "I'm so sorry, man, I didn't even think…"

"No. You didn't. You never do," Eren snapped, picking his cane up and feeling his way along the edge of my bed until he was standing directly beside me. A hand settled seekingly on my shoulder and I thought for a moment that he was going to hit me, but instead he just leaned down and knocked his forehead softly against mine, squeezing my shoulder before standing up. "And you are a piece of shit. But you're _our_ piece of shit, and nobody wants to see you pulling stupid stunts like you did. I get that your hero complex is something that will plague you until your last breath, but try to demonstrate some self-control, Jesus Christ."

And that, right there, that was why even when I hated his guts, I was incredibly grateful that Eren had kicked my ass on the floor of the Pediatric Oncology Ward all those years ago. He'd never been afraid to call me on my shit, and given my predisposition to pretentiousness and tendency to turn things into unnecessary metaphors, that was something I needed more often than not. Maybe it was just the truth I'd been putting off finally catching up to me, but I realized in one cripplingly sad moment how much I was going to miss him. I swallowed thickly, trying to even my voice out as he walked back toward the door. "Your request has been noted. I'll be less of a piece of shit, start acknowledging how much your life sucks, and put the kibosh on that expedition to climb Everest I was planning."

"Smartass," he snorted, leaning in the doorway. "Call your boyfriend. His mother had to practically drag him out of here and he's worried sick."

"On it," I nodded, waiting for Eren's clicking to fade down the hall before I let myself lay down on my side and slowly curl into a ball, preemptive loss washing over me in waves as I watched the bright blooms of the hyacinths for what felt like hours.

Levi had been right. I was a selfish piece of shit. That was why as I lay there, curled up on the awful hospital mattress, I wasn't really surprised when the thought crossed my mind that everyone wasn't just losing me. I was losing them, too.

I wondered if a supernova ever looked back in its last moments and thought about all those pretty little worlds in its orbit, wept for the loss of them just before its light went out.

I wept for mine.


	18. Chapter 18

I didn't really know how if it was accurate to count down from seven months now that I wasn't in treatment anymore. Saying that three months became two seemed like making myself a promise that I wasn't guaranteed to keep, and there was enough uncertainty hovering around everything I did without adding confused timelines.

At any rate, October became November, and November became a wheelchair.

We'd had one sitting in the coat closet upstairs since I was fifteen, home fresh off my amputation and confined to it until my leg healed up enough to start with the long process of getting ready for a permanent prosthetic. I'd hated it then. I hated it even more now. But after another scare with my heart jumping out of sync and another trip to the hospital, I was told that it could no longer be avoided. My heart, along with the rest of me, was simply too weak for normal mobility.

November became a hitch in my carefully-planned legacy, my eyes burning with discomfort if I stared at my laptop for too long and even the effort of typing exhausting me. Surprisingly enough, it was Mom who came up with a solution, bringing a brand-new tape recorder and a cellophane-wrapped bundle of blank tapes home one day. I developed a new appreciation for my mother that day. While she broke easily and was undeniably incapable of being the support system that I so desperately needed, she cared. She cared so much more than my anger and bitterness had let me realize before. It was worth the fatigue that came afterward to get up out of my wheelchair and go hug her, skeletal limbs wrapping tightly around her despite being bird-bone fragile and aching.

She clung back in a way that I pretended didn't hurt, fingers carding through my brittle hair and holding me against her like that closeness could somehow keep me tethered to life. It was times like that moment when I regretted making the decision to stop chemo. At least then I would have had a more accurate countdown, known how many weeks I had, how many more chances I'd have to hug my mother, laugh with my best friend, kiss my boyfriend. Dying as the best possible version of myself came with the price of everything I did being a potential swan song.

I wanted to clean out my room to save my parents the trouble later on, but there was only so much I could do with how quickly I got tired. Eren wasn't much help because of the whole blindness thing, and there was no way that I was going to ask Marco for help with something like that, not when Eren had yelled at me that day in my hospital room about how Marco was more upset with everything than he let me see. I didn't want to think about what would happen if I asked him to help me pack my life into neat little packages, about the hours he might spend locked in his room or crying on Eren's couch as soon as he was out of my sight. Levi had been wrong when he'd accused me of selfish motivations back in Paris. My great cosmic love had already been realized, and I was still trying to protect Marco from the worst of the blows that came with having a boyfriend bite the dust from cancer. In the face of everything else, it still didn't make me a selfless person, but it was a little gratifying to know that in the end, I'd found something to put before myself. It was probably the closest to a higher calling that I was ever going to get.

So I did what I could by myself, setting aside a few minutes each day to start packing things away and determining where they would end up, given my lack of an actual will and testament. The contents of my bookshelves all went into neatly-labeled cardboard boxes, alphabetized and with boldly-written instructions across the tops for my parents to give them to Armin, who would at least use them. My video games went into a box labeled 'Eren,' along with all of the pictures of us that were nestled among my material timeline of serially reinventing myself. All of the certificates, the carefully-posed pictures, the medals, my saxophone and violin shut up in their cases, my boxes and boxes of art supplies, all of them ended up shoved into the floor of my closet. It was a bleak realization when it dawned on me that I couldn't think of anyone who would want them. All that time and effort spent trying to become the best possible me, and all it amounted to was a pile of junk collecting dust in a dead boy's closet. I watched day by day as my room grew emptier, turning from a shrine to my search for identity into a tomb. I would lay in bed at night mumbling into the tape recorder, listening to my voice bounce off the barren walls, and all I could think of was how one day Mom and Dad were going to be brave enough to open up that closet door only to be literally and figuratively crushed by a tide of all my could-have-beens. In spite of that knowledge, I couldn't throw it all away. Maybe I was selfish to the core after all.

I was going through stacks of home movies stashed in one of the drawers of my TV stand one chilly afternoon when my phone rang, Marco's name flashing across the screen. Body aching from the time spent bent over the disorganized mess of tapes and DVDs, I straightened up with a groan and swiped my thumb across the screen, perching my phone between my ear and shoulder as I kept shuffling through titles in my mom's neat penmanship, _Jean's 5th Birthday, Jazz Band Christmas Concert - Freshman Year, Jean's First Steps, Academic Excellence Banquet '06._ "Hey, sweetheart."

"Are you okay with me coming over?" Marco said, sounding breathless and a little rushed.

I frowned a little confusedly, setting the pile in my hands aside and grabbing for another. "Yeah. I'm just, uh… cleaning my room, I guess. But sure, come over. I miss you."

Marco had been busy lately, both with class and an onslaught of doctor's appointments. The same results as always. No new growth, no shrinkage. Indefinitely terminal. He'd just gotten back from an overnight trip to Chicago a couple days before, and the trip had left him too tired to be up and around. But he sounded energetic enough now, a hint of mischief clinging to the smile I could hear in his voice when he spoke again. "Okay, cool. I'll be there in ten. I love you!"

"I love you too?" I said, half a question, but he'd hung up his phone before I could finish my sentence. Shaking my head, I went back to the task at hand, flicking through the home movies until I paused on one particular plastic jewel case, fingertips brushing over the letters Sharpie'd onto the DVD inside.

_Soccer Regionals '08_

I grabbed for the remote, lips pursed into a thin line as I turned on my TV and popped the DVD into my Blu-Ray player, button-punched through the generic DVD-R menu and brought the shaky camera work on the disk to live, wind roaring in the camcorder's crappy microphone as the focus zoomed in sloppily on a muddy field of kids in red and green uniforms running around. Mom never really seemed to get that the whole point to taping a soccer game was taping the actual _game_, so it was hard to see any real action with the camera zoomed in obsessively on a gangly, smug-looking kid with a scruffy blonde undercut and a breathless smile.

God, I barely recognized myself.

I kept watching the game with a sort of car-crash fascination, a sinking feeling pervading my stomach with every second I watched but utterly unable to look away. I was so fixated on it that I didn't even notice Marco making his way downstairs until he lowered himself carefully into the gaming chair next to my wheelchair, his face drawn and sad as he looked around at my empty walls. He reached over and gave my hand a squeeze, thumb brushing over my knuckles as he nodded at the TV screen. "Is that you?"

"Yeah."

"You were really good," he said, laughing a little as I sank the ball into the goal so hard that the other team's goalie never had a chance, caught up in a tide of five or six of my teammates slamming me into a violent group hug.

"Yeah."

"_Go, sweetie, go go gogogo- YES!"_ Mom's voice roared through the microphone as I went sprinting up the field again, kicking the ball out from under someone's feet and turning it back towards the goalpost again. A blonde blur that I was pretty certain was Thomas was running alongside me shouting something like _"I'm open! Jean, I'm open!"_ but I was single-minded, too fast for anyone to catch and too caught up with that second consecutive point with my name on it.

"There were college scouts there for me at that game," I said numbly, the hand that wasn't twined up with Marco's clenching into a weak fist in my lap. "Thirteen years old, and I had colleges practically beating down our door. That day was one of probably five times Dad ever said he was proud of me."

Marco let out a low whistle as I landed the second goal, his mild appreciation somehow more poignant than the crackling roar of the crowd on the TV screen. "Didn't they come to any other games?"

"Didn't have the chance to," I said tightly. "This was my last one."

As if on cue, the camera's view steadied, panning smoothly along with me as I took off back down the field. Pausing when a flash of pure agony rocketed across my face. Wobbling as I screamed and went down, clutching my leg.

"_Jean?"_ Mom said behind the camera, which had sunk to view her feet clanging down the bleachers. Grass. A forest of scraped knees and red socks and shin guards. My face, grass-stained and sticky with tears.

"_It hurts,_" thirteen-year-old me sobbed shamelessly, lanky body curled inwards and face ashen. _"I don't even know what I did, it's like my leg's on fire, God, it _hurts…_"_

The camera clicked off, plunging my TV screen into darkness.

"You know, I only started hating soccer after I couldn't play it anymore," I said quietly, watching the blank screen like there was still something to see there. "It was a coping mechanism, see, tell myself that I hated it so I wouldn't have to miss it. Tell myself that it's a pointless exercise, kicking a stupid ball up and down a stupid field for no reason other than personal glory and a college scholarship. Eventually I started actually believing it."

Marco sighed, stretching forward in the gaming chair and pressing his palm to my cheek, warm and solid and familiar. I leaned into the touch instinctively, let him ghost a soft, slow kiss across my lips before he got up and took the DVD out of the player, snapping it carefully back into its case. "People in our condition often become very good at lying to themselves. You're certainly not the first."

"A small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless," I snorted tiredly, looking over at the pile of home movies I had yet to sort. "Sorry, I'm probably being a downer."

"Yeah, you are," Marco said breezily, and when I snapped my head up to shoot him an offended look, he laughed. "Just because I'm good at lying to myself doesn't mean I'm going to lie to you. Anyway, I came over here with the goal of curing you of your Black Raincloud Syndrome. I… God, baby, I'd say I'm sorry but I'm really not."

And then he was lunging forward and heavy black fabric was settled over my eyes.

"Marco, what the fuck?!" I snapped, flailing ineffectually as he tightened the blindfold with cute little noises of effort.

"You know, this will be easier on my lungs and your heart if you don't struggle," he wheezed, and the effort in his breath was enough to make me go limp, albeit still grumbling angrily as I sulked in my wheelchair, blinded and depressed and confused. I could hear Marco shuffling around behind me, followed by the white-noise hiss of a walkie talkie clicking on. "Falcon Two, this is Falcon One. The jaybird has left the nest. Over."

Another hiss, followed by a warbly, tinny voice that I couldn't identify. "Roger that, Falcon One. The flock is prepped and ready to fly. Over."

"You have five seconds to tell me what's going on before I utilize what Blind Ninja Training I've picked up from Eren and follow the sound of your voice enough to punch you in the dick," I snapped, reaching for the blindfold only to have Marco smack my hands away.

"Hey, a lot of planning went into this, don't mess with my strategy!" he protested, rustling around again. "And if you really must know, I'm kidnapping you. With full permission from your parents, of course. So maybe it's not technically kidnapping, but I like to call it that for the sake of dramatic effect."

"Remind me why I'm dating you," I groaned, letting my head fall back to rest against the back of my wheelchair as I heard Marco open the sliding glass door on the other side of my room.

"Because I'm cute, I have good taste in literature, and I am by your own confession fantastic in bed," he said brightly, helping me into what felt like my leather jacket before wheeling me outside into the chilled November air around the corner and onto my driveway. He paused, and his walkie talkie clicked again. "Falcon Two, we are on the move. Rendezvous at Checkpoint A. Over."

"En route, Falcon One. Over."

"Who the hell is that?" I asked, ears straining uselessly as I grew more irritated by the second. "And why does snatching me from my own house have to be a fucking Special Ops mission?"

"For fun, duh. Remember fun, Jean? It's this thing you used to practically radiate," Marco replied, his voice a little thin with exertion as he pushed me along pavement; I was pretty sure we were headed up my street. "Call it a forceful intervention. You're going to enjoy yourself whether you want to or not."

The rattling rumble of a large engine swelled as something drove up the street, screeching to a halt beside Marco and I. There was a moment of silence, the metallic drag of a vehicle door being slid open, and all of the sudden my chair was being hauled up with a male voice behind me grunting, "Christ, you'd think someone that skinny wouldn't be so damn heavy."

I frowned, not recognizing who it was. Definitely not Eren or Armin. I felt suddenly, irrationally nervous. "Marco…"

"I'm right here," he huffed exhaustedly, slamming the door shut behind him and placing his hand on my arm. "You're among friends, don't worry. Falcon Two, roll out!"

The voice from the other end of the speaker, now unfiltered and about three feet from me, let out a laugh, a pretty, musical soprano that bounced around the inside of the vehicle. Familiar. "Good job, Falcon One."

Yeah, I'd definitely heard the voice before. I paused, concentrating hard on my other senses as we lurched into motion. The side of the car beneath my hand when I reached out was not metal or plastic like it should have been, actually felt more like… shag carpet? I took a long breath in through my nose. Weed and sandalwood. Falcon Two laughed again.

"Sasha?" I asked.

"God_dammit!_" she yelled, swerving hard around a corner and banging on the steering wheel. "Well, the jig is up. Take his blindfold off, Con."

Sight returned in a painful flash, the original onslaught of light fading to the interior of Sasha and Connie's infamous yellow Volkswagen bus, decked out in true hippie fashion, beaded curtains behind the two front seats, carpet along the floors and up the walls, guitar cases and other wooden crates of food and clothes screwed into the wall to keep them from shifting around. The space that wasn't occupied by Marco, my wheelchair, and myself was taken up by a worn old mattress covered in a heap of tie-dyed blankets that slid back and forth as Sasha rocketed up onto the highway, doing twenty over the speed limit and cutting far too close to other people's front bumpers when she merged, greeting the angry, blaring horns with a gleeful laugh. I now understood why Connie felt the need to drink after riding shotgun with her for hours.

"Where are we going?" I asked after a beat, wishing that the bus came with a Jesus Handle like my Camry did.

"Camping!" Sasha practically sang, reaching down to turn up the very modern stereo that had been wired into the old vehicle, Bon Iver's self-titled album floating airily from the speakers. "We're going to go commune with nature and dispel this funky energy that's hovering around you, Jean Kirschtein. Your _chi_ is way off, brobeans."

"That would be the terminal cancer," I deadpanned.

"NO NEGATIVITY ON MY BUS," Sasha shouted, turning around in the driver's seat and whacking me upside the head with a bundle of something solid and fragrant. Sage? Connie let out a panicked shout and grabbed the wheel, keeping us level in our lane as Sasha bludgeoned me in some sort of horribly bastardized native cleansing ritual (pretty sure the Cherokees didn't have any chants with _bringing bad vibes into my private domicile, you little shit_ in them) and begging her quietly to please turn around and drive safely, there are kids in the car, baby.

"Marco, your sister's insane!" I shouted, dodging one last thwack with Sasha's sage night stick and turning around to him with a pleading look.

"I know she is," he nodded, very calm in all of this. "And she is exactly what you need right now."

And that was all he had to say on the matter.

Two hours and several nearly-missed accidents later, we peeled off the highway onto a dirt road that shook both the shocks on the bus and my insides, making me feel peaky and sick by the time we finally stopped. Connie hopped out of the bus and slid the back door open, the old metal sliding back to reveal a calm, idyllic little clearing in the middle of the woods in Who-Knew-Where. I wasn't sure we were even in Illinois anymore. Still, it was a pretty sight, the forest wrapped in autumn and the ground blanketed with fallen leaves, the air just the right level of chilly. Of course, I was always cold nowadays, so I started hoping for a fire after just a few minutes. Connie helped lower my wheelchair onto the grass while Sasha went about the whole fire business, pulling the makings for s'mores and a bag of hash that was probably federal-offense-big out of one of the wooden crates in the bus, humming as she floated around our apparent campsite.

"So, you want to explain to me how this all happened?" I asked Marco, watching the two of them set up camp, laughing and exchanging arbitrary kisses as they worked. They really were good together, I mused; they balanced each other well, had a synergy.

Marco shrugged, leaning down and kissing the top of my head. "Sasha and Connie were doing a show in Chicago while I was up there for my appointment, so they followed us home. They both wanted to see you, I mentioned that you've been feeling down, and of course that translated to my big sister insisting that we take you on a Spirit Quest. You know, pretty normal stuff."

"So you kidnapped me?"

"Don't worry, it was very well thought-out. I made sure to pack all of your meds, and we're close enough to the highway that EMS can get here if things don't go well," he said, wheeling me over to where Sasha had gotten the fire started. "Connie even found a way to hook my BiPAP up to a car battery."

"Dude, I've rigged so much shit up to car batteries in my day that I can do it in my sleep," Connie snorted, impaling a marshmallow on a stick and holding it over the fire's new-blooming flames. "And don't stress, kiddos, you two are crashing in the bus tonight. Sash and I have a tent."

I let Marco help me with my g-tube meds before deciding that I could probably manage one s'more without it making me sick, making such an obscenely satisfied sound at the warm, gooey heaven taking place inside my mouth that everyone stopped to look at me for a second. "Sorry. s'been a while since I've had real food."

"Understandable," Sasha nodded, finishing rolling a joint with a flourish and passing it over to me. "Want to do the honors?"

"Uh, Sash?" Marco waved as if reminding his half-sister that he was still sitting there, very much hooked up to an oxygen tank.

She snorted and dug through her purse, throwing him a ziploc baggie with something brown in it. "From Mom. She said to remind you that you can't wolf it down or it'll be your seventh birthday all over again."

Half of our little group was a mess. Marco couldn't smoke because he had lung cancer, I couldn't drink the moonshine that Connie seemingly produced from nowhere because I had liver cancer among about five other kinds, but we all managed to get very decidedly intoxicated as the night wore on. And against every odd that there was, I smiled. I smiled because Sasha was just as funny as I remembered, because Connie had some of the best stories from life as a roving minstrel that anyone could imagine, because after we were done smoking, Marco moved back into close proximity and sat down on a tree stump near the fire, helping me out of my chair and down into his lap, his heartbeat thrumming steadily against my spine. I kept smiling up to and past the point where Sasha and Connie went into their tent to sleep, smiled as Marco hauled the mattress out of the back of the buss and onto the grass, the sky overhead far too clear to think of sleeping with a ceiling over our heads.

The high made everything soft and bright, but there was still a clarity in how it felt to curl up against him, my head resting on his chest. "God, I wish we could ignore the whole no-sex thing."

Marco laughed, playing absently with my hair and pulling the blankets up snugly around my shoulders. "I don't want to explain to your mother that I fucked you into a heart attack and that's why you ended up in the hospital on my watch."

"What a way to go, though," I hummed contemplatively, the sound growing into lazy laugher as I reached down under the blankets and twined my fingers up with his. "At least it'd be something noteworthy. That's better than what I'm going to get."

"Jean…" Marco started, his expression shifting to worry in the blink of an eye as he looked over at me.

"Sorry, sorry," I sighed, connecting dots between the constellations overhead and wishing I could have kept my mouth shut. "I'm just bitter, I guess. I always thought that I was going to be remembered, and now…"

"I'll remember you," he said softly.

I looked over at him uncertainly. "Well, yeah, but that's not what I mean."

"No, I know what you mean, I just think it's _bullshit_," he snapped, something in his voice suddenly very raw, very hurt. "I get it, you want life to be like a Mass Effect playthrough and make big sweeping differences in the universe, and you think that your whole existence is invalidated if you can't do that. But not everyone gets to be a hero, Jean, okay, and it's honestly really shitty of you to act like the people who don't get to be heroes don't matter. So maybe everyone on earth won't love you, won't remember you, yeah, I'll give you that. But _I _love you. _I'll _remember you. _I'll_ miss you. Sorry if that's not enough, but it's what you get."

I blinked at him, guilt settling hot and leaden in my chest. "I'll miss you, too."

"You won't miss anything. You'll be dead." I'd never once in my life heard Marco sound so bitter, the truth practically scathing as he spit it out into the chill of the night, eyes dark and bottomless as they reflected the fire's faltering coals. The words hit me straight in the gut, not because they'd had any malicious intent in them, but because I could hear the conviction when Marco said them. He honestly believed it.

"What do you think happens when you die?" I asked after a long time, sitting up beside him and watching the fire burn out.

"You get put in the ground and worms eat you," Marco said flatly. "Isn't that what you think? You told me forever ago that you don't believe in God."

"I don't believe in some guy with a beard up in the sky jerking us all around like marionettes, no," I shrugged, wrapping the blankets tighter around me to hide the fact that I was shivering. "I believe in something stronger. I believe in people, and I believe that the human soul is something very real, that it's an energy, and it's a law of science that energy can't be created or destroyed. I don't know what happens when you die, but I believe that _something_ happens. Maybe it's the whole reincarnation thing. Maybe I'll get to live another life in a world with real battles to fight where I don't get taken out by something as lame as cancer. But one thing I'm certain about is that even if I got to live a thousand lives and fight a thousand different monsters, I'd still choose you. Every time. So don't say that you're not enough again, okay, because it's not true."

He coughed thickly and curled in on himself, trying to wipe at his cheeks before I could see the tears there. "Sorry, I shouldn't, I've got no right to-"

"You've got every right to be angry and sad and whatever else," I told him, leaning forward until our foreheads touched. "Believe me, I've been running the whole spectrum lately, because everything about this fucking _sucks_. And you're right. I'm mad that I don't get to be immortalized in the universe. I'm pissed as hell about it."

Marco looked like he was either going to hit me or start crying again.

"But," I continued. "But. I have a place in your constellation right here and right now. And that is far more than I deserve."

He blinked hurriedly, reached down and grabbed my hand again. I reached into my jacket pocket with my free hand and perched a Marlboro Red between my lips.

"It's a good life, Marco," I hummed contemplatively, resting my head on his shoulder.

"Yeah," he said, constellations in his eyes and a newfound sort of peace in how he relaxed against me. "Yeah, it is."


	19. Chapter 19

November became December, became snowstorms and more medicine and a constant pain in my chest that never really let up.

The inclement weather kept Marco and Eren both penned up in their houses, and it made my parents increasingly nervous, although they tried not to show it. The snow meant treacherous roads, which meant slow ambulances, which meant disaster if my body decided on a whim to go into full revolt. And as miserable as I was, I didn't want that. My goals had shrunken to simply making it past Christmas on sheer force of willpower alone. I didn't want to ruin the holidays forever by Christmas being stained with the memory of me kicking the bucket. My parents were going to have it hard enough as it was, and I couldn't even bring myself to think about Eren and Marco getting sad every time they heard carols on the radio.

So, no. I wasn't fond of the snow. But there was nothing I could do to stop it. It was kind of like everything else in my life that way.

December also became me moving permanently out of my room, the stairs too much of a hazard and the basement too far from my parents if something were to go wrong. My habitat became a hospital bed set up in one corner of our living room, a host of home medical equipment plugged into the same power strip as our Christmas tree. One of the nurses I remembered from Memorial came by a few times a week with pain meds and anti-nausea drugs. I refused to let anyone utter the word "hospice" in my presence. The times I wasn't sleeping became devoted to either all-consuming pain, puking, or talking into my tape recorder for as long as I could before exhaustion took over.

The sole benefit of moving to the living room was that my bed was right next to a big bay window, and while I wasn't pleased with the snow keeping my best friend and boyfriend away, it was pretty to watch as it fell, artful spirals of white that settled delicately on the windowsill and dusted along the bare tree branches in the front yard.

I kept looking out the window as I sat on a Skype call with Levi three days before Christmas Eve, a cold IV drip of diluted morphine filtering through my PICC line and making everything pleasantly fuzzy. "Is it snowing in Paris?"

"Not right now, no," he shook his head, sharp clicking coming through my laptop's speakers as he multitasked and typed something on his own computer with a frown. "Amelie's irate about it. Kid wants a white Christmas if she's got to hike to the North Pole to get it."

"You should bring her to Trost. It's dumped over a foot and a half here in the past week, only just slowed down enough that they've got the roads cleared."

"No fucking thank you," Levi grimaced, a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth as he shook his head absently and kept talking. "I'm from New York, remember? I've had my fill of shit-tons of snow."

"Fair enough," I shrugged, having to pause and ride out a painful few minutes of wet, body-wracking coughs. The mets in my lungs weren't advancing as fast as they were in other places, but it was to the point that there was constantly fluid sloshing around in there now. This was every day for Marco, I reminded myself. Chin up. "Did you get my last email?"

"Yeah, I'm looking at it right now," he nodded, pursing his lips.

"_Papa, qu'est-ce que tu fais?"_ a tiny voice rose up from off-screen, and Levi cursed under his breath, reaching down to stub out his cigarette as Amelie clambered up onto the couch beside him, dressed in a school uniform with her hair tamed into one long red braid. _"Mademoiselle Hange dit que nous pouvions-"_

"I'm talking to Jean right now, _chérie,_" Levi said, still looking at his screen as his free hand came up absently to pet down a few stray hairs that had escaped from her braid.

"Hi, Jean!" Amelie squealed, flailing into her father's lap and waving excitedly into the camera. "Jean, tell Marco that I sent him a letter, okay? We had to write to our pen pals for class and Mademoiselle Hange helped me send it!"

"Will do," I laughed tiredly, giving her a little wave in return. "Are you having fun in school, Amelie?"

"So much fun! My teacher has a library that we can take books home from, and-"

"_Va jouer avec Mademoiselle Hange, petit singe, je serai là bientôt," _Levi muttered, lifting Amelie down off of his lap and pressing a kiss to her forehead, watching her run off into the depths of the house. I could have sworn that I saw him smile before he looked back at the computer, carefully impassive again.

"Speaking of Hange, how's that little soap opera playing out?" I snorted, watching the way the light slanting through the window refracted through the liquid dripping down my IV.

"Slowly. We agreed to kind of put the brakes on and figure out how the hell this is going to work."

"Do you love her?" I asked.

Levi had been taking a drink of some amber-colored liquid in a crystal tumblr, choked loudly and looked at me with a dumbfounded expression. "Jesus fuck, that's not a personal question or anything."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, because you don't know _anything_ overly-personal about me, Levi. We're totally not at that point. My apologies."

"Don't be a sarcastic little shit about it," he groused, back to nursing his drink as his eyes flicked up in the direction of the doorway Amelie had run through. "I'm trying to figure out if I even remember how to love anyone besides my kid, man. It was a long, complicated process learning how to do it the first time, and unfortunately, falling in love isn't like riding a bike. Once you let that part of you atrophy, it's a long, shitty process of trying to get your heart back in the right place. I've never had much of one to begin with."

"You should write that down," I mused.

"Maybe I should." Levi let out a wry laugh, reaching for another cigarette now that Amelie was out of the room. "I've been toying with the idea of writing a memoir, you know. Organizing my shitshow of a life into something coherent might help me get my head wrapped around all of this."

"Marco would be beside himself if I told him that."

"Don't you dare."

"Oh, don't look at me like that." I was surprised that I wasn't falling asleep yet. In fact, I was feeling better than I'd felt in a long time. A lot of that probably had to do with the drugs, but I decided to just take it at face value, rolling my eyes at Levi and fiddling with the tape recorder in my lap. "He doesn't even know that I've been keeping in touch with you. He probably wouldn't approve of you encouraging my never-ending quest for a legacy."

Exhaling a cloud of smoke, Levi said, "Your boyfriend really hates me, doesn't he?"

"Marco doesn't hate anyone," I corrected him, looking over the top of my laptop screen at the snowflakes sticking to the windowpane. The roads outside were clear for the first time in a week. "He just doesn't like you."

"How charitable of him."

"Frankly, I don't like you either."

Levi scoffed, setting his drink down on the coffee table and raising an eyebrow at me with such a perfect arch that I could feel the waves of cynicism all the way across the Atlantic. "Is that fact meant to wound me? News flash, kid: the total amount of people who have liked me in my lifetime amounts to four. The fact that a snot-nosed brat with a hero complex isn't on that list doesn't bother me all that much."

"No need to get so defensive," I said airily. Mom came in from the kitchen and sat a Dixie cup of my afternoon meds next to the bed. She had learned her own version of the plastic smile, had actually almost perfected it, only the slightest twitch of sadness in her face before she turned around and went back to whatever it was she'd been doing. I'd always thought that her at least trying to hold herself together would make me feel better about everything. It made me feel much, much worse. I sighed heavily as I knocked the handful of pills back, shot up my g-tube meds, and looked back up at Levi with a crooked almost-smile. "Although I suppose I should be grateful that you helped me with solving my whole legacy conundrum."

"Damn right you should be," he grumbled, leaning back into the couch cushions and lapsing into a long silence.

"You know, I've been thinking about legacies lately," I said.

"When are you _not_ thinking about legacies, Kirschtein?"

"Fair point," I conceded, waving his interruption off. "But I've been thinking that it's all sort of an exercise in futility, isn't it? Life. Legacies. I've spent all this time making sure I've got something to leave behind, and I'll never know whether it sticks or not. All that time and energy over a legacy that I'll never see realized. It's like a book without an epilogue."

"Low blow," Levi said.

"That wasn't aimed at you," I huffed impatiently, fingers drumming over the tape recorder's plastic casing, over my little legacy snapped securely inside. "But it just struck me as sort of bizarre, how I and so many other people have invested our lives in something we'll never see the product of. Is it really a legacy if you never know the impact you've made?"

On the other side of the camera, Levi leaned forward with his elbows perched on his knees, fingers steepled in front of his face. It was the posture he adopted when he was thinking about something, I'd noticed after several Skype chats, his lips pressed into a white line as he mulled it over. Finally, he raked a hand through his hair and said, "I think, my friend, that you have just brought a paradox to light."

And maybe I had. If even Levi couldn't make sense of it, maybe my compulsive desire to leave my mark just didn't make sense at all, plain and simple. Maybe it was something primal left over in my DNA from the dawn of humanity, the remnants of handprints on cave walls thousands and thousands of years ago, the desire to leave something saying _this was me, I was here, I bore witness to this huge, beautiful, wonderful, terrible world._ All around me, I could see blank spaces that I wanted to fill in. I wanted to leave my own brand of cave painting on every wall of my house, on the stony ledge surrounding the Bodts' koi pond, the railing at the top of the Eiffel Tower. There were places I wanted to leave my mark, but more importantly, there were people. I wanted to make sure that Eren would remember the exact way he had to whine at me to make me do stupid shit in the name of our friendship. I wanted my parents to remember the exact angle of my actual, not-plastic smile. But of all the blank canvases out there that my legacy had not touched, I wanted to color Marco in with every shade I had in me, wanted to smear warm burgundy memories in the spaces between his fingers and leave handprints splayed across the valleys between his ribs, paint every single kiss I'd never be able to give him irrevocably onto his lips. The idea of leaving the people I loved pale and empty was so terrible, so gutting, that I physically curled in on myself for a moment, teeth clenching against the pervasive pain in my chest.

"I think," I finally said, "that all this time, it hasn't been about leaving a legacy. I think it's been about making sure that a handful of people have something to hold onto. Because that's the best I'm going to get."

"I applaud your honesty," Levi nodded, steepling his fingers again. "I was waiting for you to figure it out. And do you think that you've done that?"

"I don't know," I admitted, sounding more scared than I wanted to. "I'll probably never get to know. God, that's terrifying."

"Well, you could always just ask them," he shrugged.

I looked down at the tape recorder again, took a deep breath, and earned another minute of agonizing coughing for it. "Yeah, I could. Thanks, Levi."

"Hey, that's what I'm here for, providing cynical assholery and occasional profound life - or death, as it were - advice," he smirked, leaning forward to disconnect the call. "Take it easy, Jean."

"You too," I smiled shakily just before the screen went dark, slumping back against the pile of pillows behind me and staring out the window again. The sun was coming out, and the snowflakes stuck to the glass were starting to melt a little.

I picked up my phone and called Eren.

"Are you okay?" he said when he picked up. He and Marco had both dispensed with the conventional 'Hello?' weeks ago.

"No, I'm dying, but that's beside the point," I drawled boredly, putting my phone on speaker and dropping it on my lap long enough to reach over and disconnect the IV from my PICC line. "I need to ask you for a favor."

"Yeah, sure thing," Eren said without hesitating. Two months ago, he would have called me a manipulative bastard and told me to go fuck myself until I bribed him with food or video games.

"Any way you can get yourself, me, and Marco into the church where you guys have Support Group after hours?" I asked.

He paused for a second. "Uh… yeah? There's a hide-a-key in a rock by the back door; I used to see Erwin use it all the time. But why do you need to-"

"Don't ask questions. Just meet me there at eight o'clock, dress in your Sunday best, and have a eulogy ready."

Eren exhaled sharply and muttered "What the fuck, man," and hung up his phone.

Marco's phone almost went to voicemail before he picked it up, wheezing and panicked. "Jean?"

"I'm still very much alive, sweetheart," I said.

"Sorry, I was in the shower," he coughed, the light strains of some indie band in the background telling me that he was in his room.

"Good, then you won't have to get changed. Get dressed up all snazzy and be at Support Group Church at eight. Bring a eulogy."

"Jean, what-"

"I love you!" I said brightly, hanging up the phone. Peeling back the tangled blankets, I sat up in bed. "Mom!"

She came sprinting in looking absolutely terrified. "What?! Sweetie, are you okay, are you-"

"Why is everyone's opening statement to me 'are you okay' now?" I sighed, rolling my eyes. "I'm as fine as it's possible to be. In fact, I feel better than I have in weeks. But I need you to go get my leg and my wheelchair and the suit that's hanging in the dry-cleaner's bag on the coat rack, and if it's not too much trouble, I need you to drop me off at that big Episcopal church over by the public library."

"I… okay?" Mom frowned, tilting her head to the side. "Can I ask why you need to put on a suit and go to church on a Thursday?

I smiled widely at her. "I've got to go to a funeral."

At eight o'clock, Mom wheeled me across the parking lot to meet Eren at the door of Support Group Church, thankfully not asking too many questions before she agreed to come back and pick me up at ten. Eren just sort of stood there silently until she got back in her car, bouncing on the balls of his feet and tugging uncertainly at the collar of his polo shirt. His mother must have picked out his clothes. The Eren Jaeger I knew wouldn't have been caught dead in khakis. He felt his way along the outside wall as mom's SUV rumbled out of the parking lot, turning in my direction with a scowl. "Okay, are you gonna tell me what the fuck's going on, because I'm a little confused."

"We're going to have a pre-funeral," I told him, bending over and turning over rocks in the flowerbed until I found one that had a plastic box holding a key imbedded into the bottom, unlocked the door and held it open for Eren to work his way in, prodding at the air unsteadily with his cane. "And you're underdressed, by the way. If you show up to my actual funeral looking like a middle-aged dad on a golf trip, I swear on everything good in the world that I'll haunt you for the rest of your life."

"You're probably in your pajamas right now, asshole."

"Excuse me." Exaggeratedly offended, I grabbed Eren's wrist and held his palm against the collar of my suit jacket, smirking. "I'll have you know I'm in Brooks Brothers. If I'm going headlong into the Great Beyond, you can bet your ass I'm dressing to impress."

"Idiot," Eren grumbled, a grudging smile tugging at his lips as we piled into the elevator and rode up to the sanctuary instead of down to the basement where Support Group met. The sanctuary was still and beautiful, lots of stained glass and high, vaulted ceilings. I still wasn't one to believe in invisible moderators in the sky, but there was still a measure of peace in the place that I was thankful for. I wheeled up to the first row of pews, helping Eren sit down.

Marco ducked in about five minutes later, wearing black slacks and a white button-up with a grey-and-black striped necktie. He looked a little uncertain as he tugged his oxygen tank up the aisle behind him, but he still smiled when he saw me, and I felt the echo of it stretching across my own lips. "You're late. You look very dashing, though."

"And you look about fifteen kinds of hot in a suit," he replied, leaning down to kiss me once he got up to the pew where Eren and I were. "Why are we all dressed up?"

"Because this is my pre-funeral, gentlemen," I said, gesturing grandly around the sanctuary. "On the off-chance that I won't be able to attend my real funeral in spirit, I want to make sure that it will be a satisfactory experience. So, consider this a dress rehearsal, as it were. This is the suit I'll be wearing on the big day, so if you want to work any comments about how dapper I was into your eulogies, now is the time to do it."

"Dude, that's fucked up," Eren laughed disbelievingly.

"Just for that, Eren, you get to go first."

He grumbled all the way up to the intricately-carved lectern at the front of the sanctuary, clinging to Marco's arm for guidance and clearing his throat once he was in place. "God, this is weird."

"I just knocked ten points off your grade. Anything less than a C-minus and you're not allowed to eulogize me," I said. I didn't realize until after I'd been an asshole that Eren's hands were trembling where they gripped the sides of the lectern, that his next breath was shaky and uneven. I felt a sudden desire to punch myself.

"There is a certain taboo in our society that often goes unspoken, something that everyone assumes that people just inherently _know_. You are never supposed to speak ill of the dead," Eren started, his unsteadiness fading into a small smirk as he pushed his sunglasses up on the bridge of his nose. "I would like to take this opportunity to defy social norms and tell you all that Jean Kirschtein was an arrogant, pretentious pain in the ass."

I let out a peal of laughter that rang off the stone walls and bounced back to our little gathering tenfold. Eren cleared his throat again, looking down at me in a silent reprimand.

"Jean Kirschtein was the most self-important little prick I've ever met in my life. He could find a way to turn anything into an unnecessary metaphor, he walked around with an unlit cigarette in his mouth because it made him feel deep and mysterious, and the kid couldn't say two words without being the most condescending bastard you've ever had the misfortune of hearing. The first time I met him, I beat the living shit out of him, and it sort of set a precedent for our relationship."

Eren swallowed heavily, his fingers mapping out the ridges and valleys in the carved wood of the lectern. "That said, Jean Kirschtein was my best friend. Because for every ounce of pretension he put out into the world, he also put out a pound of general awesomeness. And maybe his obituary says something about how he was beloved of his peers and classmates, but that doesn't mean shit, because being popular at school doesn't touch what Jean Kirschtein was. The fact that osteosarcoma gets to put his name on a hit list is the _worst_ kind of bullshit, and-"

"Actually, it's my bum heart that's killing me," I chimed in.

"God, shut up, you asshole, you're supposed to be dead!" Eren snapped, his voice thick as he gripped the lectern again. "Jean Kirschtein may have been the type of conceited motherfucker who would interrupt his own funeral, but that's okay. We forgive him. And if I had the chance to choose between one day of being able to see again and one day with my best friend back, I'd choose the latter every time, because I've got no desire to see a world without Jean Kirschtein in it."

I blinked rapidly, rubbing a hand over my eyes. Eren was an idiot. I was going to miss him more than I could articulate. "B-minus. Edit out the cursing. My grandparents are going to be there."

"B-minus this, dickweed," Eren growled, sniffling and flipping me off as he worked his way back down to the pew. But for all his blustering, he leaned in and wrapped me in a brief, crushing hug before he sat down, looking horribly lost as he settled in beside me.

"Marco?" I nodded up at the lectern, and Marco sucked in a breath, pulling a folded piece of paper out of his breast pocket and heading up to the front of the sanctuary with his tank trundling squeakily behind him, movements sharp and precise as he smoothed the paper out on the wooden surface.

"Many of you will roll your eyes hearing these words coming from an eighteen-year-old," he started, the beginnings of a knowing smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "I sometimes roll my eyes when I say them to myself, but that sense of skepticism makes it no less true that Jean Kirschtein was the one great love of my life."

I felt a weight heavier than the entire world sink into my stomach.

Marco was standing with ramrod-straight posture, a cool demeanor, obviously used to public speaking, but the wavering, liquid brightness in his eyes told a different story although his voice remained even. "We had a whirlwind Greek Tragedy of a love story, but I'm not here to talk about it today. None of you came here to hear me talk about how beautiful he was or how much I love him or how much I miss him. That he was beautiful was a fact that even he knew and wouldn't hesitate to inform people of -" Eren and I laughed. "- and I'm sure that you're all too busy with your own measures of loving Jean and missing him to be bothered with mine. I'm not going to tell you our love story, because Jean told me once that the integrity of a story becomes compromised the moment that it's given to the world to judge. I want the integrity of our love to be ours, even if that means our love story dies with us."

The pain I'd been medicated for had nothing on this. Suddenly, I was struck with how foolish it had been of me to throw this together. Maybe there was a reason that people never got to see their legacies come to life; maybe this was it. I would have taken a lifetime of cancer over what I was experiencing in that moment, would have taken dying without knowing if I left my mark over the experience of seeing my mark in person, realizing that it was a scar. No kind of pain could start to compare to what it was to sit there and watch Marco say his goodbyes.

"I won't tell you our love story, not only because I value its integrity but because I'll start crying if I try." The dim light of the sanctuary caught on shiny tracks falling over Marco's cheekbones and pooling in the place where his oxygen lines pressed against his skin. He laughed, a horribly sad, cracking sound, wiping at the tears with one hand. "But I guess it's too late for that. Since I won't talk about mine and Jean's love story, I'd like to give you all a little lecture on Astronomy."

His voice cracked again, and he grimaced, looking mad at himself for it. I was crying by that point too, and far more shamelessly than Marco was, not even caring that tears were dripping off my chin and dampening the brand-new fabric of my funeral suit. He took another shaky breath, reading almost rhythmically off the paper. "When a star dies, we might not know it here on Earth until tens of thousands of years after the fact. Light can only travel so fast through space, and they are so far away that the news of their passing does not affect the way we see them until long, long after they're gone. In fact, one might say that a star doesn't truly die until it stops existing in the skies of those that see it. And Jean, my love, my beautiful supernova, we have never been the kind for promises, but I can promise you this much: you will always have a place in my constellations, right up until my own star goes out."

He made it back to the pew in an absolutely heroic mask of composure before he broke down, burying his face in the crook of my neck and letting out these horrible, choked little raspy sobs. I'd never seen Marco cry in earnest, I realized, had never seen him be anything less than the strongest individual I'd ever met.

This was my legacy. Breaking him. I wished that I'd never had the urge to find out. Dying unfulfilled and ignorant would have been better.

It was the sort of mutual breakdown that left us with only to option of clinging to each other to keep from getting lost in it, both of our breaths sickly and rattling, his heartbeat steady beneath my seeing hands while mine was off-tempo and weak. I would have given anything to go back to that night before everything started down the slippery slope to ruination, would have died right then and there just for the chance to go back and lie in the fragrant, heavy summer air under a crystalline sky with Marco's nose brushing mine, anything for a few more moments of him smiling and telling me stories about the stars and debating the finer points of multiple Oblivions.

But there was no higher power I believed in enough to bargain with, and this was what we got, this was our lot, holding each other in an empty sanctuary with mingling sobs bouncing off the stone while Eren slipped out the door to give us some privacy.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I shouldn't-" Marco finally said, leaning back and brushing his hands over the rumpled, tearstained lapels of my shirt. "God, your suit."

"It's fine," I managed to choke out, feeling like I was drowning in my own overworked lungs while my failing heart hammered at my ribs in backlash for the exertion of breaking. "It's fine. I'm sorry, too. For everything. For all of this."

"Don't you _dare_ apologize for this," Marco said suddenly, the tears evaporating from his voice and eyes blazing almost angrily as he leaned forward and rested his forehead against mine. "Don't you _ever_ apologize for us. I'd do it all again, Jean. Every bit of it. You have to know that. I'd do every last second with you over and over again. Okay?"

"Okay," I replied, wishing I didn't sound so fragile.

I wanted nothing more than a big bed and hours to sleep and him curled up beside me, but my mom was coming to pick me up and Marco had a family Winter Solstice Gathering that he was ditching to be at the church already. We took a few more minutes finding the strength in each other that it took to get up and head outside with our plastic smiles on. Karma swung into the parking lot in her van to pick Marco up, hopped out of the van and kissed me on the cheek before heading back towards their neighborhood. I watched the taillights until they disappeared around the corner, the wintry air burning my lungs. It was starting to snow again.

"So, did you get what you needed out of this whole shitshow?" Eren asked conversationally, meandering over to me from where he'd been leaning against the wall.

I looked into my jacket pocket at the little blinking red 'record' light of my tape recorder, paused it and checked that I still had tape left before I turned it off and leaned back in my wheelchair, letting the snowflakes sting my skin. "Yeah. I think I did."


	20. Chapter 20

_Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;  
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.  
_Sarah Williams, "The Old Astronomer to His Pupil"_

Christmas came and went without much incident, although it was without a doubt the most depressing affair I'd ever seen.

Our house was crammed full of family that I hadn't seen in years, distant cousins and great-aunts filing by my bed in the living room like people file by a coffin in a funeral home. Plastic smiles all around.

What I couldn't understand, though, was the insistence everyone had on giving me presents. What do you get a kid with terminal cancer for Christmas? Clothes? I lived in pajamas and layers of hoodies now, chronically cold. Gift cards? Yeah, because I was totally feeling up to a shopping trip. My cousins from Pittsburgh actually brought me a soccer ball. A _soccer ball._ I think even Mom was proud of me for managing to bite back a _Do you realize that the fact that I have one leg makes this useless, not to mention the whole thing with me dying?_ I smiled and nodded and thanked them all, thinking privately about what a raw deal it was. Conventional Christmas presents were about as much good to an eighteen-year-old on the losing side of cancer as a pile of gold, frankincense, and myrrh were to a baby. Maybe the thought counted, but it only counted for what little of it had honestly gone into the action.

The one thing that made it all bearable was that Marco came by after my family cleared out, wearing the ugliest Christmas sweater I'd ever seen and clutching a neatly-wrapped present under his arm.

"Tell me you didn't buy me a gift," I groaned.

"Cheer up, Scrooge." He tossed the package down on my lap, leaning over to kiss the top of my head before sitting down in the recliner next to my bed, panting from the walk from the driveway to my living room. I'd had to find out from Karma that the fluid in his lungs was getting bad again, that he had appointments at the hospital every few weeks to get it drained. I couldn't figure out whether Marco's and my own fumbling efforts to protect each other from our own mortalities was ironic or just sad. I didn't really want to think about it. His fingers laced up with mine, a short squeeze before he let go and looked around at the almost obscenely festive Christmas decorations around the living room. "Your mom goes hard, huh?"

"She's trying to drown the pervasive sense of despair in holiday cheer," I deadpanned, rolling my eyes. "She keeps Barry Manilow's Christmas album turned up so loud that no one can hear all the medical machinery."

My collection had grown impressively, from my just my IV system to the addition of a pneumatic compression device that kept the blood circulating in my leg, and the hulking spectre of an oxygen compressor between my bed and the window. On the night after my pre-funeral, I'd been sent home from the ER with the diagnosis that my lungs were doing a shit job at being lungs, and the remedy for this was that Marco and I now had identical plastic lines angled down across our cheekbones. He reached out and traced his fingertip along one of them with a sad smile. "You know, I always thought it was cute when couples did the whole matching thing, but this is a bit too morbid for me."

"Yeah, well, being cute and morbid are my areas of expertise," I slipped into a sleepy grin, glancing down at the wrapped parcel in my lap. "I didn't think Christmas presents could be morbid until today when good old Cousin Nick gave me a soccer ball that I might have appreciated if I was still thirteen and able-bodied."

"Oh God, that's awful, I shouldn't laugh," Marco proceeded to laugh anyway. My sense of humor was rubbing off on him.

Instead of finding the sadness in that realization, I started in on a tirade that was as dramatic as I could make it, given the fact that even raising my arms felt like competitive weightlifting. "And now here comes my boyfriend, clad in the ugliest of sweaters and bearing a gift that he probably knows he wasted his money on…"

"Actually, I wasted _your_ money on it," he smirked, reaching down to mess around with something on the side of his oxygen tank and coming back up with the very noticeably empty Metaphor Jar in hand. "There's still something to the tune of fifty bucks in the overflow piggybank you got me for my birthday, but we were at Toys R Us shopping for my little cousin's birthday and I saw it and I felt compelled to get it. Now open your present before I charge you a dollar in the jar for making Christmas presents into a metaphor for life and death."

"Fine, fine," I sighed, starting in with cold, clumsy fingers on the wrapping paper. Marco was one of those infuriating people who mummified presents in tape to the point that they were nearly impossible to open, or maybe his mom was. At any rate, whoever had wrapped the damn thing should have been given employment opportunity at Fort Knox. Frowning in concentration, I started talking to him absently as I peeled off maddeningly tiny scraps of shiny blue paper. "Can't believe your mom let you out of the house on Christmas. I thought you guys were big on family time."

"We do Winter Solstice, remember?" Marco said, shrugging. "And the parts of our family that aren't agnostic hippies are very, very Jewish. Christmas is kind of a moot point. I only bought this sweater ironically the last time I was at Goodwill with Mom."

"You bought something ironically? Proud of you. Anyway, I have a present for you, but it's not done yet so you'll have to wait," I snorted, one side of the wrapping paper finally giving way so I could tear it all off and look at the box in my lap, the snark dropping from my face and an ache in my chest beyond what I usually had taking up residence.

_Home Planetarium!_ the box proclaimed, the words arched above a picture of little kids gathered with wide smiles around a big plastic orb that shot off Photoshop-exaggerated pinpricks of light. _Turn any room into a night sky!_

"It's too cold to go outside, and it's been so cloudy lately anyway," Marco explained, reaching over to peel back the lid on the box and take the home planetarium out, frowning as he tried to figure out how it worked. "And I know it's not actual stargazing, but it's supposed to be really accurate with the constellations and everything, so I thought-"

"Marco." I reached over and grabbed his hand again, telling myself that I was _not_ going to cry and actually managing to keep a promise for once, swallowing hard and wondering what good I'd ever done in life that led me to deserve him. "I love it. Thank you."

It wasn't a soccer ball or a gift card or a sweater three sizes too big that I'd never wear. It wasn't a thoughtless gift, an obligatory offering made without real effort because come on, who knows what to get a kid dying of cancer for Christmas. It was something so perfectly and uniquely _Marco_ that it was almost funny in how well it fit, because after everything we'd been through, for every hellish second of post-chemo puking and bloody, tearful confessions in gas station parking lots and regrettable pre-funerals that we'd made it through together, he was still thinking of the good times.

The times I was most in love with him, I realized, had all been under the stars. The night he'd ended up in the ICU, when he'd told me that he was a supernova and I'd told him that I'd be privileged to perish inside his gravity. The night when we'd talked about constellations and dying stars, when my ticking seven-month clock had stopped mattering for a few seconds, irrelevant in the face of the fact that a present with Marco was better than a future with anything else. On top of the Eiffel Tower with his lips on mine, my only regret that I couldn't find some way to put that one moment on endless loop and stay in it for an eternity. Sitting beneath fireworks, watching their little Oblivions fade out in seconds but still seeing the beauty in them, no matter how short-lived. Curled up on a shitty mattress in the dead grass with Connie and Sasha snoring in a tent a few yards away, my head on his chest and the inherent knowledge sitting somewhere in my bones that even if I did live a thousand lives and get the chance to fight a thousand monsters, heroism could never feel as good as he did.

And all those moments that I loved him most, they all paled in comparison to him moving methodically around the living room, unplugging the Christmas tree, turning off the obnoxious carols, shutting the curtains, turning off the lights, and plugging in a stupid twenty-dollar kid's toy that somehow meant more to me than any precious thing the world could have offered me.

Marco crawled up into the thin space beside me in my bed, tucked my head beneath his chin and told me the legends behind every plastic constellation in our artificial sky until I fell asleep.

I didn't want to live a thousand lives with the chance at heroism anymore. One night with him under the stars sprinkling my living room ceiling was more fulfilling than a legacy could ever be.

He came by every day after Christmas, seemingly not bothered by the fact that I slept through most of his visits or that I couldn't talk for too long without getting winded, not used to crappy lungs the way that he was. We did lazy, stupid things, watched _Fight Club_ and drank hot cocoa, played video games even though Marco had always sucked at them and all of my medication and atrophied limbs had made me suck even worse than he did. He dragged Sasha and Connie along with him one day, and they sat in the middle of my living room floor and played us an impromptu acoustic set, lots of Woody Allen covers and flowery songs about subverting The Man. My hospital bed in the corner became an island, waves shifting around it. Mom stripped down the Christmas decorations with almost terrifying precision, plastered up the New Year's ones in a whirlwind of shiny streamers and tacky Party Central cardboard centerpieces. Marco and I sat on a Skype call with Eren while she flitted in and out of the living room, single-minded in her effort to cover up the impending smell of funeral home flowers with champagne bubbles. He was visiting his grandparents in Denver for the holidays, which translated to moping in their cabin while everyone else went skiing and bitching about his inconsiderate family to Marco and I until his projected return on January 3rd.

"At least your folks have the decency to stick around instead of ditching you to go have fun," he grumbled, "Tacky decorations or no."

"But my favorite decoration's up there," I said, pointing at a blank corner of the ceiling.

Marco frowned confusedly, and Eren said "It's not like I can see it, you dumbass, tell me what it is."

"It's the last fragile scraps of my dignity, just floating around, waiting for a window to fly out of."

"Dollar in the jar, Jean, God," Marco groaned, slapping a palm to his forehead.

"My wallet's on the coffee table," I said, smirking. "Go buy yourself something pretty."

"Dweeb," he laughed, making no move towards the coffee table.

"I second that opinion," Eren nodded, adjusting his sunglasses and flopping back on a hideously-patterned couch. "But hey, Team Jaeger just rolled in and I'm being summoned for hot cocoa and hours of being regaled with stories from the slopes with no regard for the fact that I'm being left out. Fun times. I've gotta bounce."

"Bye, Eren," Marco grinned, waving at my webcam even though Eren couldn't see him.

"Bye, Marco." The corner of Eren's mouth twitched up before his face settled into something a little more grave. "Hey, Jean, we're gonna hang when I get back, right?"

"I've got nothing better to do," I said, trying to sound bored.

"You miss me, you asshole," he snorted, still looking faintly uneasy as he sat up on the couch. "I'll be home in five days. See you then."

"No you won't."

"Oh, fuck you!"

"Love you, man," I laughed.

"Yeah, yeah, I love you too, despite your terrible blind jokes. Catch you when I'm back in Trost," Eren grumbled, disconnecting the call.

"It sucks that he's having such a bad time," Marco mumbled, taking my laptop and setting it over on the coffee table so he had room to curl up with me again, watching the New Year's decorations reflect the light into plastic rainbows on the walls.

"He'll get over it," I scoffed, tracing lines between the freckles smattered across his jawline with my fingertips, unbelievably sleepy given that I'd already taken a three hour nap. The pain hadn't even been that bad lately. I was just tired. So tired. "Eren's not content unless he's bitching about something."

"Yeah, still," he shrugged, sighing softly, and running a hand through my hair. "How are you feeling?"

"Not bad, actually. Better than I have in a few days," I said, tangling my leg up between Marco's and resting my head on his shoulder. "Just really fucking tired. I think just _watching_ Mom do New Year's prep is exhausting me."

Marco pursed his lips.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing," he said, holding me a little more tightly.

We stayed like that for another hour or two, cuddled up under my piles of blankets and watching the Harry Potter Weekend that ABC Family was running, me drifting in and out of sleep while Marco's slender fingers almost absently mapped out my skin, sliding along the curve of my shoulder, over the lattice of silver-blue veins stretching under the skin of my forearm, along the ridges of my cheekbones under the oxygen lines.

They say that memory is more tactile than visual. You remember the things you've held far better than things you watched from afar.

His phone rang somewhere between _Prisoner of Azkaban_ and _Goblet of Fire, _and after a short exchange, Marco hung up and sighed, "That was Mom. I've got to go home and fill out some paperwork; I've got another appointment in Chicago next week."

"Lame," I mumbled sleepily, in a sort of limbo between awake and unconscious as he got up and started packing up his stuff.

"Yeah, I know, right?" he rolled his eyes, picking the still-empty Metaphor Jar off the coffee table before he walked back over and pressed his lips gently against mine. "I'll come over tomorrow. I love you."

As he walked out of the living room, I thought about that uneasiness I'd seen on Eren's face, about Levi telling me that closure was the greatest gift you could give someone, about how beautiful Marco was in one of the million cardigans that he owned. My thoughts were scattered and hard to organize, faltering supernovas that glowed dimly against the fatigue that was already tugging me down again.

I almost let him get to the front door before I called after him, "Hey, Marco."

"Yeah?" he asked, turning around.

"C'mere," I mumbled, waiting for him to walk back into the living room. I sat up in bed despite the fact the the sudden motion made me cough for a few seconds, pulling him down into a kiss that was much longer and deeper than it should have been given the fact that my Mom wandered into the living room midway through it and then backed out slowly.

I loved him. I loved everything about him, loved his stupid sweaters and his weird books and the way he fiddled with his oxygen tank when he was nervous. I loved the angle of his smile and the way he looked asleep beside me at three in the morning in a hotel room in Paris, loved how his kindness never took away from the fact that he had a mental fortitude that I could only sit and envy. I loved the tiny freckles on his lips that you could only see if you were close enough to kiss him. I loved his laugh and the way his voice sounded wrapped around my name, loved the way he rolled his eyes at me when I said something pretentious, loved the way he kissed me like I was the only thing that mattered.

I had never been a supernova. My metaphor was flawed. Stars are soulless, and no dying cosmic entity could have ever loved the way that I loved Marco.

"I love you," I whispered, still close enough that he breathed the words in then we parted, a hand coming up to press against his cheek before I leaned further back, grinning softly and tilting my head to the side. "Okay?"

"Okay," he whispered back, the smile he gave me not even close to his plastic one. It was the real thing, soft and glowing, the one that made you want to do anything he wanted just for the chance to see it again. Marco shouldered his backpack and walked back over to the front door, calling out "I'll see you tomorrow, Jean," as an afterthought before it shut behind him.

I took another nap after he left, had a dream that I couldn't remember much of besides the fact that we'd both been stars and that people light-years away wove legends around our love story to explain our presence in the sky.

I woke up a few hours later to a dark, quiet house, took the opportunity to dig around for my tape recorder. Marco had been around so often in the past few days that I hadn't had much of a chance between being with him and sleeping to continue, but I was feeling in almost eerily good shape now, able to talk for well over an hour before my chest even started hurting.

I'd gotten so good at committing things to memory that I considered it sort of a shame that I'd never be in a situation where note-taking was necessary again. If I could memorize days of conversation, college classes would have been nothing. But this seemed a far nobler pursuit, sitting in bed and outlining my own little legacy. Facts and figures may have made the world go round, but what my life orbited was something far more… far more…

Far… more…

Mom! _Mom!_

"Sweetie, it's four in the morning, are… oh God, Jean, honey, what's wrong?"

I can't breathe. Mom, I can't _breathe._

"You're okay, hey, you're okay, I've got you, just try to breathe slow, baby, just… _Jim! _Call the hospital! That's it, honey, in and out, slow breaths."

I c-can't, it feels like there's something on my chest, I can't…

"Shhhh, baby. You're okay, there's an ambulance coming, you're going to be fine."

Don't call Marco. God, Mom, p-please don't call Marco.

"Okay. Okay, we won't. Just try to keep breathing, Jean, okay?"

It _hurts…_

"I know, sweetie, I know. Look, there's the ambulance, you're going to be fine, see?"

The tape recorder.

"Jim, for God's sake, go unlock the door! I'm right here, honey, I love you so much, just breathe."

Mom, the _tape recorder. _I need it.

"We'll worry about it later, Jean-"

Mom. Please. Just turn it off and give it to me.

"Male, eighteen, suspected cardiac arrest-"

"Sam, go get the AED."

"Ma'am, if you could just move over there, please…"

"Okay. Okay, honey, here it is, I'm turning it off."

Click.

Click. Hiss.

"Eighteen year old kid with a fucking heart attack, and we thought it was gonna be a slow night."

"Poor guy, though. He's the one Trost High was doin' that fundraiser for, remember?"

"Oh yeah. So, you didn't tell his mom…"

"I'm not gonna stand there and tell a mother that her kid'll be lucky to make it to the hospital, Sam, Jesus."

"Fair point. Okay, his pressure's bottoming out again, we gotta do something about this… Hey, what the hell?"

"Huh. Looks like a tape recorder. Must've hit the button while you were doing compressions."

"Well, turn that shit off and help me here!"

Click.

Click. Hiss.

Mom? Is it still working?

"Yeah, I think so. The front's cracked but the little thingy is still turning. Jean, what-"

How much tape is left?

"Why do you-"

_Mom._

"...Not much, honey, I'm sorry."

Okay. Okay, just give it here and let me have a minute.

"I'll be right outside, sweetie."

Mom. There's a box of tapes under my bed at home. They're numbered. I need you to mail them and this one to the address on top of the box, okay? I need you to promise me you'll do it.

"You can do it yourself when we get you home, honey-"

_Mom._

"...Okay. I promise. I'll be in the hallway."

I love you, Mom.

"I love you too, Jean. So much."

And it would seem that I had the most inconvenient heart attack on the face of the fucking planet. I was technically dead by the time I got to Memorial, but the miracles of modern science and a well-placed shock tugged me back. But everyone, even my parents in their deepest denial, everyone knew a cancer-weak heart with one heart attack already on the board was just a time bomb. I knew it. I know it. And that's why this is all ending much more abruptly than I wanted it to.

I had a nice little ending all planned out, but as Levi said, you don't get an epilogue when you're dead. I guess what you get is a hospital room and a tiny scrap of tape and too much to say.

I have been a stubborn, self-absorbed bastard my entire life, slow to learn and even slower to accept. The fact that it took dying to teach me what living was is enough of a testament that I don't need to clarify the matter any more. But even though I was slow to learn, I still learned.

I learned that while the world is not predisposed to handing out wishes, it handed me Marco, which was something far better. Life is not as unfair as we make it out to be. Life is unpredictable, which is a different thing entirely, and we humans, creatures of habit that we are, warp it into unfairness because we think we're entitled to know our lives before they happen.

We want to know so we can get our legacies in line, so we can brace ourselves for the pain before it comes, so we can know how much time we have left to live and love. But we humans do not have that luxury. The only thing we get is the knowledge that Oblivion is inevitable, the knowledge that it's part of the human condition to hurt - fuck, the 'low tape' light is on, fuck, fuck, fuck.

The human condition is that we are all supernovas with souls, burning out from the day of our inception and searing our way into the skies of the people around us. We live with the fact implied that people will one day fall into the black holes that we become. We live with the fact that the same will happen to us. The one predictability that we get, the one luxury that we're allowed is that we can choose whose supernova we fall into. I'm more than happy with my choice.

The poet Sarah Williams once wrote, "I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night." I always thought that it was a load of bullshit. All humans fear the dark at the end of all things, and no matter how good we get at lying to ourselves, there will always be a part of us that is scared of Oblivion.

I thought this until I found a star that was worth jumping into the void for just a few minutes in his light.

And Marco, I


	21. Epilogue - Marco

"_It's just another night and I'm staring at the moon_

_I saw a shooting star and thought of you_

_I sang a lullaby by the waterside and knew_

_If you were here, I'd sing to you_

_You're on the other side as the skyline splits in two_

_Miles away from seeing you_

_But I can see the stars from America_

_I wonder, do you see them too?" _

__Ed Sheeran, 'All of the Stars'_

The book in my hands feels heavier than any law of science says it could possibly be. Ninety-four thousand six hundred and sixty-two words can't possibly weigh so much, but maybe it's the blank space on the last page that's heavier than all of them combined.

Jean died in December. My brand-new hardback copy of _Oblivion_ turned up on my doorstep from a return address in Paris in March. I put it on my shelf and didn't touch it until May. I didn't flip past the first page until June. And somewhere between that stupid _Fight Club_ quote and 'Marco, I,' I somehow ended up sitting here in the basement of the Kirschtein household, curled up in a dust-covered gaming chair and trying not to feel like everything in me is falling apart. I'm not doing a very good job of it.

Missing him comes in waves that ebb and flow but never really stop completely. Six months later and I'm no longer paralyzed, and that's about the biggest achievement I can claim. The first few months felt like I was a puppeteer in control of my marionette limbs, piloting myself through the motions of life but not really feeling anything. Numbness was the one shot I had at protecting myself from what came next. January, February, snowfall and the pale blue walls of my room and my mom begging me to eat.

The pain came later. March, sitting at Eren's house because I could see Jean everywhere in my own, sitting on my kitchen counter, falling into the koi pond in the back yard, pacing the floor of my bedroom, and it was slowly driving me insane. Making the lung-shattering trek across the grounds of Sunset Cemetery's manicured grounds to stare at a polished hunk of rock and remind myself that there was only one place he could be. Bursting into embarrassing, hysterical sobs on the way home because I saw some guy in a leather jacket pull a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. Doctor's appointments. You're not taking good enough care of yourself, Marco. You should focus on staying healthy.

Why the hell would I want to do that?

April. A package on the front porch that predated a new #1 on nationwide bestseller lists by a week or two. The first book in years to achieve wild success posthumously of its author. People bought _Oblivion _for the little promise of 'with a foreword by Levi Rivaille' under the title, or so the talk shows said, but they stuck with it for the heart-wrenching tale of love and loss. My phone rang with so many interview requests that I changed my number. The world had decided that our love story possessed the highest level of integrity.

Jean finally got his legacy. I couldn't even look at it without collapsing into tears.

Eventually, the buzz died down. The phone calls stopped, the talk shows found different books to recommend, the days passed, one after the other. May. I took the book off my shelf, ran my fingers over the dust jacket . The cover image was a picture of the Metaphor Jar, the real one, a snippet of my bedroom in the background. He'd taken it with his phone while I hadn't been looking. The back was nothing but a quote from that Sarah Williams poem about the old astronomer. Opening the cover felt like cracking open a tomb, but I did it anyway, only if long enough to take one look at the author biography on the inside of the dust jacket before I ended up curled up in the middle of my bed, folded in on myself in a futile effort to keep every fiber of me from exploding into bloody, ragged bits. I hadn't had anything to hold me together in months.

Above the few lines of text about middle school soccer teams and a fondness for Chuck Palahniuk, the picture I'd snapped on my phone of Jean dripping wet and covered in koi pond sludge grinned out at me.

I realized that I'd forgotten what his laugh sounded like. I didn't come out of my room for three days.

First half of June. More doctor's appointments. We can't tell much until we get more tests, but there might be some new growth.

Oh.

And so maybe I left the house today because I couldn't stand my parents looking at me like I'm a ticking time bomb anymore. Maybe I brought the book with me because some part of me really didn't want to die without knowing what it said. Maybe I drove for an hour before I somehow ended up in the Kirschteins' driveway because for some reason, it was the only place I could think to go.

His parents still haven't cleaned out the basement. In fact, no one's been down here since a month or so before Jean died. No one's been down here since he got too sick to sleep without supervision, but that doesn't change the fact that he still clings stubbornly to every speck of dust, even after he put so much work into pulling all those pictures off the walls and boxing up his things. There's a box of books destined for Armin still in the corner, another package with Eren's name on it over by the door. Nothing for me, though. No mysterious little parcels, no envelope addressed to Marco sitting on his empty desk. Everything I had with him is now in the hands of millions. Sometimes I resent him just a little bit for that, and then I realize what I'm thinking and end up trying to hold myself together again. It never works very well. Jean was always better at it than me.

The book still open in my hands, I get up from the chair and wander over to his bed. Still unmade. _Oblivion_ gets placed gently on the nightstand for long enough for me to stretch out on the dusty mattress. The sheets still smell like him. My throat tightens painfully, and I force myself to sit up before the weakness in me makes me determined to lay there forever because it's the closest to him I've felt in ages.

_Marco, I_

"I what?" I whisper, picking the book up again and staring at the last page. "Marco, I _what?_"

The book doesn't answer, because it's lifeless paper. The one person who could tell me is rotting away in a Brooks Brothers suit six feet under the cold earth.

I'm too lost to realize this, hands shaking as I stare at the words until my vision blurs. "I what?"

His jacket is hanging off the back of his desk chair, the top of a carton of Marlboro Reds peeking out of the pocket. The sight of it sends spiderweb-cracks across my skin, and six months later, I finally break.

"I _WHAT?!_" I scream-sob, chucking the book away from me with all the meager force I can muster before I collapse back onto the bed, lungs screaming in protest against the searing pain that crying brings. Every hiccuped breath feels watery and useless but I can't stop, a hand clutching at my chest and wishing that I could somehow physiologically get away with ripping my heart out so it would stop _hurting_ so goddamn much.

Hurting is part of the human condition. Fuck the human condition. I've been hurting for a huge chunk of my life, but it's always been with a goal in mind. Chemo to shrink tumors. Surgeries to help me breathe. Drug trials to keep me indefinitely terminal. I'm fine with pain so long as it has a purpose. This? This is meaningless.

"It's not _fair,_ this isn't fucking fair," I choke out, somehow lucid enough to realize that I'm not talking to myself. Sometimes therapists will tell you that it's healthy to talk to the people you're grieving, but that's usually only if you believe that in some way, they can hear you. It's a little hard to hear from a grave all the way across town, but that doesn't stop me, fingers clutching white-knuckled at a pillowcase that still smells like Old Spice and Pert shampoo and accusation turning words to knives. "God, you can't do this to me, not you too, I came here to say goodbye and _dammit,_ Jean, I…"

I what?

My chest hurts too badly for me to do anything other than lay there, a trembling mess with diseased lungs that's on its way out of the world, crying in the middle of a dead boy's dust-covered bedroom and trying desperately to remember how his kisses felt. I feel like I'm drowning in my own lungs (probably because I am), fingers quaking as I reach over and turn the oxygen intake on my tank all the way up. The physical aspect of the pain lessens after a few minutes, allowing me to sit up and look at the place where the book made a dent in the drywall. Jean used to have a poster with the rules of Fight Club hanging in that spot, pictures of his Jazz Band competition trip to New York City hanging beside it. Now it's just empty space marred with the rage of yet another thing that he left behind. The only difference between me and all those boxes in the corner is that I feel his absence. I can't stay still long enough to collect dust. If I've learned one thing from today, it's that stillness lets me get too far into my own head and realize just how much I need him, the exact extent to which I'm actually not dealing with the fact that he's gone.

The night he died, I sat there and looked at my phone for hours trying to figure out who to call. The only person I wanted to talk to about Jean Kirschtein's death was Jean Kirschtein, and I was too numb at the time to see the absolutely depraved brand of irony in that.

The book sent a cloud of dust up when it fell to the floor, the pages rumpled to the point that one of them is sticking out further than the others. Frowning, I lean forward and scoop it up, trying to smooth out the damage. The rumpled page is actually a few pieces of folded paper, tucked into the back of the dust jacket. Frowning, I smooth out the creases and squint down at the top one, gaze flicking back and forth over the spidery, elegant handwriting.

_Marco,  
If you're reading this, then you have either A) Finished the book and thrown it as hard as you possibly can, B) Finished the book and found this tucked into the back, or C) This is not Marco, in which case, fuck off and stop reading other people's mail. Still Marco? Yes? Okay, moving on. You're probably looking at the last page of this book and starting to think that I have a pattern, to which I would like to respond, this one wasn't really my fault. I'm not the author on this one, just the editor. As is implied, Jean's tape recorder ran out while he was in the hospital the night he passed away. Unfortunately, no one was around to hear what he said. While I now understand what a shitty thing it is to end a story mid-sentence, it would be an even shittier thing for me to put Jean's last words in his mouth. I sincerely hope that you can forgive me, him, and everyone else involved._

_Also, you should know that in our last few correspondences, Jean had his misgivings about _Oblivion_ being published after his death. His original intent was for me to compile the book and simply send it to you and you alone. If you want someone to blame for the book's publicity, blame me. I brought up the concept of legacy, and… well. You knew him better than I did. I don't really need to say more._

_But no matter what the world does with your love story's integrity, Marco, you need to understand its true purpose. Every single word of this book is a love letter. I'm not sure what Jean left for everyone else, if he left anything at all. But this is what he left for you. For the last months of his life, his sole purpose was making sure that you would have a lasting reminder of how very much you were loved. So before you get angry about your story's compromised integrity, take the time to consider that it doesn't matter one fucking bit what the world thinks. That boy loved you. You loved him. The world's judgements are irrelevant._

_I'm a stubborn bastard and I don't learn easily, but your shit-head brat of a boyfriend taught me that much. I have him to thank for the ring on Hange's finger and the fact that my kid's going to have a mother again. If you're ever in New York, drop us a line._

_Our conversation at the funeral didn't end well, and I didn't have the chance to tell you what I came to tell you. This book wasn't the only thing that Jean left for you. A few months before Jean died, I got a letter in the mail, which was weird since he usually stuck to email. I can only imagine that he sent it to me that way because he knew that I wouldn't be the only one seeing it. I have enclosed the letter behind this one._

_I can't offer much other than my condolences and empathy, having lost a love to cancer as well. You know as well as I do that I'm shit at talking to people, and I know as well as you do that you're not fond of me, but if you ever need someone to yell at, you know where to find me._

_He loved you. He loved you. I am in awe of how much he loved you. Please, always remember that, no matter what._

_Regards,  
Levi_

My hands are shaking again, either from deoxygenation or the physical manifestation of a grief that's finally taking its toll. The room feels suddenly claustrophobic - I've always hated being underground. The only thing that made this basement even close to tolerable is long gone from it - and as soon as I've got my breathing back under control, I get up and walk over to Jean's desk, carefully taking his jacket off the back of the chair and wrapping it around my shoulders. It's a little big on me; the sleeves almost cover my hands, but the worn leather carries the same scent as his sheets. It's as close to comfort as I can get these days.

The night outside is chilly for summer, the cool air drying the tear-tracks on my cheeks as I walk across Jean's back yard and sit with my back against the chain-link fence. Almost a year since we sat and watched fireworks become miniature supernovas over our heads. He wrote about that night in the book, about what kind of soda we were drinking and what I was wearing, but what I remember best was his smile. The porch light is close and bright enough to read by, but I can barely shuffly the pages until Levi's letter is in the back, his careful penmanship replaced with Jean's messy scrawl.

_Levi,  
I'll probably write about this in installments you'll see later, but it bears mentioning that I ended up in the ICU a few days ago. Long story short, we're stopping treatment. Tick-tock, my friend. I'm about to be discharged currently, but something happened that I felt the need to write you about as soon as possible._

_I had a pretty heated argument with my best friend today that basically ended with him shouting at me that "you'll be long gone by the time Marco finally bites it, and I'm gonna have to fucking go to both of your funerals." That got me thinking._

_Marco is indefinitely terminal, while I, on the other hand, now have a much earlier expiration date. I will undoubtedly be dead long before him, and out of all the injustices we've had to suffer, I think that this is perhaps the greatest. Marco will have to go to my funeral, will have to eulogize me, will have to go through the process of grief. In the grand scheme of things, I get off pretty easily if you don't count the whole dying thing._

_You've already done so much for me by helping me out with the book, but I'd like to ask just one more favor in light of recent events. When Marco dies, I'd like you to take all the sentimental bullshit I'm about to spew at you, turn it into a proper eulogy, and read it at his funeral in my stead._

_And don't even complain about plain tickets, you cheap bastard, you're filthy rich. But I digress._

I'm blinking back tears again, but they aren't the kind that rips me apart at the seams and renders me useless, just sitting thickly on top of my vocal cords as I rasp out a laugh and flip to the next page of the letter, pulling the pack out of the pocket of Jean's jacket and fiddling with a single cigarette between my fingers as I read. He tried to teach me how to hold one once. I felt stupid and told him that I'd leave the obnoxious metaphorical smoking to the professionals. He laughed. I loved him. I love him.

_The thing about Marco it that there aren't enough words in any language on earth to describe what he is. He is so much more than the sum of his parts, so much more than the fact that he is smart and kind and funny and beautiful, although he is all of these. I've tried looking through the taxonomy of words that mankind has invented, and I still can't find something that works. The Germans have a word for the feeling of being alone in the woods (Waldeinsamkeit, if you're interested. It's a lovely word), but no one has come up with a word for the feeling of Marco Bodt granting you his love. While I'm not a linguist, I can work with my limited materials and hopefully convey something close._

_He is smart. He is so incredibly intelligent, not just because he reads obscure books and listens to folk music and drinks herbal tea, but because he sees the world as it is, realizes that there is an order to the universe and that we are all just tiny parts of it. He has the strongest mind and the strongest heart that I have ever been privileged to know, but he never makes you feel like you are less than him for that. The fact that he is smarter than you is not something you dwell upon. It's a simple fact, and you accept it with a smile._

_He is kind. There is sunshine beneath his skin and he lights up any room he walks into. Marco draws people to him because he is inherently kind and good, and the fact that a person so inherently kind and good ever thought twice about giving me the time of day never ceases to amaze me. He is so much kinder than I deserve. If the world were full of people like Marco, it would be a far better place. But I'm selfish enough to be glad that the world isn't full of people like Marco, because if it were, I might be too desensitized to realize how special he is._

_He is funny, but he is never mean. He can make you laugh with the stupid things in everyday life without ever making a single person feel bad. I'd say that his smile could cure cancer, but that would just be evidence on how my sense of humor is far, far more horrible than his._

_He is so beautiful. Once you look at him, you don't ever want to stop. He has very tiny freckles on his lips that you have to get very close to see, and he has beautiful hands, and a beautiful smile, and a beautiful soul. As an artist I like to think that I have an eye for beauty, but every time I try to draw him it never quite comes out the way I want. The fact remains that he is a Mona Lisa in his own right, and I am not a Da Vinci. The closest I get to capturing how beautiful he is won't be in a picture or a book or any other physical record. It will be in the way I keep looking at him for as long as I can because I _know_ that nothing can accurately portray how incredible he is._

_I am so unbelievably lucky that he loves me, Levi. I am so privileged to be allowed to love him. And maybe you were right, maybe all great cosmic loves eventually end in pain, but I will accept that pain happily. In the long run, we don't get too many choices in life. One of the few allowances we get is the ability to decide what sort of pain is and isn't worth it. And any sort of pain is worth it for the knowledge that he loves me._

_So maybe Marco was right when he told me this the first time. The best word invented by man to describe him is 'supernova.' Because he is complicated and dangerous and incredibly beautiful, and he pulls everyone around him into his gravity despite the fact that day by day we are both collapsing inward._

_I am glad that I fell into him. Okay?_

"Okay," I whisper to the constellations overhead.

Maybe it's true that one of the only choices we have in life is who we let hurt us, and I'm happy with my choice. But not happy enough and far too alone to stop me from placing the paper cylinder between my lips, digging the unused lighter out of Jean's jacket pocket, and lighting it.


End file.
